Graffiti Gods

Anshumanth Rao
 Copyright © 2022 Techshresta Solutions Private Limited

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or

transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other
electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.

The author asserts his moral authority to be identified as the author of this book.

First published in 2022.

Cover Art: Satish Chandra

Cover Page Title Font: a Attack Graffiti Font by wepfont from fontspace.com
To the Manipal community, for still going strong
 Preface

I wrote this book over four years—it didn't take the best part of those
years, it's four measured from start to finish. It lay untouched for
months at a time in between when life and work got in the way or
when I forgot that this project was important to me. It didn't help that I
never had any unrealistic expectations about how successful this
book would be to spur me on.
But then, finally, I reminded myself that success here isn't how many
copies I'd be able to sell. This is a very personal piece. I had a story
that I needed to tell, whether to one person or to ten or to how many
ever people read this. The number doesn't matter, although, of
course, I would love for it to be a large one. The fact that I have
finished writing this is already success. The fact that you have this in
your hands and are reading it right now is success. So, congrats to
me for all the work I've put into creating this.
Like all writers, I am a reader first and as a reader, I am not blind to
some of the shortcomings of this book. But, I am also—excuse my
lack of modesty here—aware of quite a few merits in this book. I
wouldn't be putting it out there if I thought it sucked.
No matter how and how widely Graffiti Gods is received, it is
something that I'm very proud of. I'm genuinely grateful to you for
giving this a try.
A final note. With this being a self-publishing effort, it would help out a
lot if you could leave a rating and review on Goodreads and
Amazon/Flipkart, tell a friend or social media about the book, and
whatever else.
These last few months before publication, I've been so excited about
the prospect of this book being in a reader's hands and getting to
know what they think about it. I would love to hear from you. Oblige
this small-time author if it isn't too much trouble.
Happy reading, I hope you enjoy the book.
 A Disclaimer
This story is fictional and a figment of my imagination, but it is also
rooted in my experiences. While certain aspects of it may be inspired
by or built upon reality to varying degrees, this remains a work of
fiction. All characters, places, organisations, and events were
invented as required by the story I had to tell, with one exception.
Manipal is a real town and I did grow up and go to college there, but I
have only used it as a base to build this fictional college universe on
due to my familiarity with it. Any further resemblances are
coincidental. All other resemblances to real-life people, places,
organisations, and events are coincidental and unintentional.
"it's never a win with you is it"
You've convinced me but

when you've put out your cigarette

I'll argue with you, or your silhouette

about legacy and sacrifice

and who gets to be an asshole

and if I want to leave behind or take away

or risk neither or just never play

and then, if it's too late

we'll wait for dystopia to turn

my profiles into immortals:

you should meet the new-age kid

kicking down doors

I think you'd really like him,

he's like me

just a little bit better

just a little less hazy;

 1: Villains With Weak Philosophies
If you run a website—which Samar did, in part—you'll probably
have to think about Google page ranking at some point. You'd want
your site to show up near the top of search results, not hidden away
on page two with all the dead bodies. The more that other pages link
to your website, the better your chances.

College, too, is a networking game. You fight for upvotes and

visibility and hits. The people you know, the people who know you,
the people you're seen with, the people who talk about you to other
people, the people whose Instagram stories you show up in. If you're
smart enough to know that this is the competition that defines college
but not smart enough to win, it's not going to be a smooth ride.

Vartika would have been in the leaderboards by any standards,

with an easy charm, pouty good looks that did away with the need to
be nice, an incredible political mind, and a vaguely transatlantic
accent that came off posh and exotic in ways that added to the
attraction. Would have been, but had never made it courtesy the lack
of an IPO. She was one of the players good enough to know better
than to play. She avoided the popularity game and didn't care about
what anyone thought. It had benefits—her mental health and general
well-being were probably better off this way. Still, Samar resented the
waste of potential.

His grey sedan skidded to a halt in the empty parking lot. It was
past six, and with the semester just beginning, there was not much
business on campus.

Vartika flicked her lighter open and lit a cigarette. For a brief
moment, Samar was unable to hide his disdain, and Vartika noticed it.
They both pretended it hadn't happened. Samar didn't care much for
people's lives, but still took the effort to have opinions on wills weak
enough to trade them away for a bit of high. He spent effort
conservatively, even stingily, on the pleasures and niceties of life.
 "Where do you stand on doing the right thing?" he asked her.

Vartika took a long drag. It was a difficult time to be friends with

Samar.

"How far do you expect to get in life by screwing people over all
the time?" she asked finally.

"Further than I would get by not, at the very least," he said, his lips
settled in that practised half-smile.

Samar liked to make it clear that he knew he was the smartest

one in the room, even when it came at the cost of being shown the
door.

"The organisation needs you, and you're one of the best players
I've ever seen," said Vartika, getting out of the car. "But sometimes, I
wish you didn't know that with so much certainty."

Samar scowled and watched her walk away before getting out. It
took him half a dozen punches at the remote and a few choice curses
before the car doors locked. He walked to the theatre, which was just
a couple of hundred metres away—everything in Manipal was
centred around his engineering college.

He looked around and spotted Sahil with two generic buddies.

Sahil was set to take over as the President of the college
Photography Club, which specialised in visual media coverage. The
other two were in no student clubs or organisations, making them
worthless to him. He made it a point to forget their names.

Samar's media body, The Standard, had no photography

department and depended on PC for photos from events. Ostensibly,
the reasons were that the good relationship between the two
organisations made it unnecessary and The Standard focused on
written content. In reality, it was mainly because they knew they
couldn't compete with PC when it came to attracting talent.
 They were going to watch some Marvel movie; Samar hadn't
bothered to find out which one. He had outgrown superheroes in high
school and also had the highest disregard for Thanos' plan in
particular. Overpopulation was such an outdated idea and too weak
to be the grand philosophy of a villain in a franchise spanning over
twenty movies.

He was just there for relationship-building. The Standard, being

Manipal Technology University's official media body, covered all
student activities and ventured into a mild amateur brand of
journalism as much as they could. The current Board had entered the
fourth and final year of their engineering course and was practically
out. Deliberations and voting to determine the new Board would begin
soon. Samar had all intentions of becoming the Editor-in-Chief.

Samar and Sahil "sup" ed each other. Samar loved how "whatsup"
was a reply to "whatsup" now. It was the one time you were expected
to answer a question with a question, and Samar enjoyed not giving
people information.

"I'm going to go get some popcorn; you want anything?" Sahil

asked him.

"Nah, I'm good. Little short on cash right now," Samar replied,
looking over his shoulder at a slim long-haired girl sipping coke on the
white benches that lined the walls of the theatre opposite the food
counters.

"See you in a bit then."

Sahil walked away, his henchmen following dutifully.

Samar moved to the girl and sat down next to her. She smiled at
him and carefully set her glass down.

Sagarika headed Social Media for the college's technical fest,

handling the social media accounts, online publicity, and content
creation. The category's functions overlapped partly with the work of
the full-time media bodies, but the Student Council needed people
they could control. The Standard and Manipal Matters, the other
major player in town, worked independently, and the Council had no
say in their operations.

Manipal Matters rubbed Social Media the wrong way by producing

similar content as they did and outshining them when it came to
traction.

Sahil's Photography Club was also part of the equation. With PC

being an official college club but lacking the special status that The
Standard had, the Student Council had control over them. They
exercised this by forcing them to run a Photography and Videography
department for the fest. Unlike Manipal Matters, they didn't get to
represent their own organisation. Manipal Matters' content went on
their own online platforms, while PAV's had to go on the fest's page
instead of the Photography Club's. None of their work during
Prometheus furthered their club's interests.

The two categories had long clashed with the Council in wanting
Matters banned. But Manipal Matters had a large, permanent
workforce and great reach, courtesy quick and voluminous, if often
shoddy, content. The Student Council recognised the importance of
the publicity they brought the fest and therefore resisted these
demands.

There was no love lost between The Standard and Manipal

Matters either. To the principled, snobby, and elitist official media
body, Manipal Matters was all that was wrong with the world. Where
would any incentive to create quality content come from if
substandard work like Manipal Matters' was rewarded with as much
traction as they got?

What Samar didn't like, however, was being brought into the
argument without their consent. A week ago, Social Media had
declared to the Council that it wasn't just their fight, and The Standard
didn't want Manipal Matters in the fest either.

"Any luck with Manipal Matters?" he asked Sagarika.

 She shrugged.

"You know the Council, they love those bastards; they keep
throwing their reach and the publicity they bring in our face."

"Did it help when you told them we wanted a ban on them too?"

Sagarika hesitated, sensing the hostility.

"Yeah, I thought so," Samar pressed on. "Listen up then—The

Standard has to preach free speech and cannot conscionably press
for anyone's ban. Never ever speak for my organisation again. I am a
highly energetic man, and I will direct every ounce of effort into
making sure every fucking group with a Facebook page shows up to
cover the fest if you forget that."

He paused briefly.

"Now, with that being said, nothing would please me more than to
see you win on this."

"Having everybody with a Facebook page making content, is that

your idea of us winning?"

"It isn't going to go there," Samar assured her. "We're both

reasonable people, aren't we? See, The Standard cannot call for a
ban. However, I could quietly make sure that the most that any
Manipal Matters member sees of the fest will be a Vigilance guy's
shoe as he kicks them out of the room."

He tried to read Sagarika's face, his own a practised mask of self-

assurance.

The fest's Vigilance category was a group of self-important people

tasked with managing entry into the events—glorified bouncers.
Samar had never seen that little power go into anyone's head that
much before.
 "How are you going to do that? Social Media has been fighting
this for years."

"Your idea of fighting is to keep telling the Council the same things
over and over like they don't already know your side, and then hope
for a miracle. That's not so much my style. I know the college
administration, I know the Council, and I know how to work people.
And I am willing to work them for you."

"That's generous, I never took you for such a philanthropist."

"Consider it a gesture of goodwill. Just make sure you never

presume to speak for us again. And, you know, keep The Standard's
interests in mind during the fest. Throw us an occasional bone when
you can. And you'll owe me, of course."

"Planning my funeral already, are we?"

Samar turned to see who'd spoken and flinched slightly. He wasn't

one for too much caution, but plotting within earshot of the still-
technically EIC of his media body while his Board position was still
not cemented was too far away from safe.

"My bad, I hadn't seen you around for a while, I didn't know you
were…"

He paused to take in the ironed shirt and jeans Rahul was

wearing in place of the track pants and faded superhero shirt that
normally adorned his frame, then glanced at Sagarika.

"Still in the game," he finished.

"Give us a minute, will you?" Rahul told Sagarika.

"They just opened the doors. I'll see you inside. We're in row D."

"Does your Board know about whatever this is you're planning

with Manipal Matters?"
 "What Board, Rahul? We're not the Board yet," he replied
cautiously.

"Right, you'd do well to remember that now, wouldn't you? You're

not even unofficially in charge. The posts are in contention."

Samar snorted. The contention came from a delusional joke of an

editor, Titirsha. She drifted in and out of the organisation doing the
minimum and compensating with occasional loud involvement
designed to convey competence. It helped that she was pretty and
likeable enough that people wanted to believe she was valuable. It
might have worked if Samar hadn't been willing to turn up the toxicity
and put her on the spot. It came at the risk of coming off as an
asshole, but he really didn't mind that. If anything, he relished it.

For the entire summer vacation, he'd relentlessly taken her editing
apart on their WhatsApp group, forcing her to scramble to fix things
minutes before publication. He'd also broken the chain of command
and been in communication with the writers under her, subtly nudging
them to pester her to fast-track their articles.

The pressure tactics had worked, and she'd finally cracked a week
before the semester started. She'd freaked out and left the group for
a month. To the others, Samar was a work-conscious editor trying to
ensure quality while Titirsha was a sloppy worker who couldn't take
the trouble to get things right.

"If you mean Titirsha, I wouldn't fancy her chances," Samar

smirked.

"Yeah, you made sure of that, didn't you? I'm not an idiot, I know
what happened."

Samar leaned forward and gently pushed Sagarika's half-empty

cup of Pepsi over. The dark soda slowly spread across the white
marble floor.

"See, it doesn't matter that I tripped her up because all anyone

sees is that she took a fall and spilt the drinks."
 An Inox staff member rushed over. Samar loved their policy of
giving replacements when people dropped their sodas. He thanked
the man as he offered to get them another, then got up.

"That's an extra half glass of soda, Rahul. You're welcome."

 2: Overdrawn Accounts
Riti, the Junior Cultural Secretary, stifled a yawn. She was tired,
and the sleep deficit was stacking up.

"Sorry," she apologised and gestured for Mahesh to keep going.

His eyes narrowed slightly. Mahesh was in his mid-thirties and of

the generation that considered it a personal affront when someone
yawned as they were speaking. Adults were idiots sometimes.

"As I was saying," Mahesh continued, "we'd got a lot of responses

on the initial form, but the turnout for the actual orientation was
dismal."

Riti glanced at Dhruv, the Student Council General Secretary, glad

that he was there. He'd handled tougher situations.

Mahesh ran Expert, a coaching institute trying to break into the

GRE and GMAT crowd. The Sponsorship category of Prometheus,
Manipal Technology University's annual technical fest, had identified
them as a potential sponsor. Mahesh had wanted to gauge student
interest before committing. He'd sent them a Google form that
interested students could fill, and then sealed the deal after seeing
over a thousand responses.

The Prometheus Category Heads and their second-year

Organisers alone numbered around a thousand, so considering that
filling in the form did not really bind them to anything, getting that
many responses hadn't been difficult. It did mean, however, that
Mahesh's expectations had been way too high going into the initial
orientation and FAQ session. He was now slightly beyond borderline
pissed, but it had been worth it from their point of view. Keeping
someone at the table after they'd handed over their money was
considerably easier than getting someone to give you the money in
the first place.
 "I understand your disappointment, but it was just a matter of bad
timing. It was a Friday evening, and the next day was the third
Saturday, which you know is a holiday. So a lot of people would have
left town, others would have just wanted a break, and there were a
couple of placement tests for the fourth-years too," Riti told him.

"We're partners here, aren't we? If I'd chosen a bad day for an
event, I should have been told. I feel like Expert's contribution would
have earned us that much at least," Mahesh countered.

"It slipped our mind," Dhruv stepped in. "It's the Operations
category that specialises in schedules, we really didn't think much of
it. It's only easy to figure out what went wrong in hindsight."

"Okay, but Expert isn't a charity, we're putting in some serious

money, and it needs to be worth it. Right now, I'm not so sure it is."

"As we've said before, we can't guarantee you results, at least not
immediate ones. It's July now, people have their immediate future
planned out. I can promise that we're going to put your brand out
there as much as we can. This is a long-term relationship we're
looking at. Give it a while, and when people have a need, they'll turn
to you."

Riti expected a few more people to gain sudden interest in the

standardised tests as the placement season progressed. College
students followed the bell curve: a small number of people were
terrible, a small number were exceptionally good, and everyone else
fell somewhere in between. One extreme, the gifted, had figured out
that they were too good for just one degree and would already have
taken the GMAT or GRE and begun applying for their master's. Those
at the other end would increasingly despair as companies recruited
everyone but them, and start looking for backup options.

"But either way," Riti took over, "you tell us what you want to do
next, we'll make sure that word reaches everyone in college."

Eeshan stuck his head in the door and waved Riti and Dhruv over.
 "Would you excuse us for just a minute?" she said. They walked
around the long oval table in the centre of the conference room and
into the outer area, shutting the door behind them.

"What?" Dhruv asked Eeshan.

The Council Treasurer looked ruffled.

"Hold on, Agni's on his way," he said.

"By the way, try not to take too many meetings like this," Dhruv
told Riti. "It's Sponsorship's job; they ought to handle it."

"Yeah, but Mahesh was upset, he wanted an escalation," she

said, rolling her eyes.

"Oh, I don't think meetings with Mahesh will be a problem

anymore," said Eeshan, with a wry smile.

"Alright, what's happening?" Agni crashed into the room, his dark,
deep-set eyes flashing with fury beneath his furrowed brows.

Riti couldn't remember ever seeing him calm. The Technical

Secretary rushed everywhere he went and flurried into every room he
entered with the demeanour of a man responsible for preventing the
sky from falling down. As he was the Convener of an understaffed
fest, however, that last bit was not really that far from reality at the
moment.

"Kamath isn't signing off on the Expert MoU," Eeshan announced.

Nobody spoke for a long while. Dhruv walked across the room
and checked to make sure the door to the conference room inside
which Mahesh sat was firmly closed.

"What the fuck?" he said finally.

 "All our sponsorship deals get Kamath's approval and then move
on to the Finance and Legal departments, right? So, I go to him for
his sign off. And the fucker tells me no, Expert is an educational
institute and therefore MTU can't do the deal because of policy or
conflict of interest or some bullshit. I was shown out of his office in a
minute, I didn't even get to argue."

Nagaraj Kamath, a grizzled, hardened man in his fifties, was the

college's Student Activities Director with oversight of all clubs and
fests.

"But we already have the fucking money, it's a done deal!" Agni
spluttered.

"Yeah, well, he says give the money back, there's nothing to be

done," Eeshan shrugged.

"We got the money a month ago! Our entire budget is built around
it, we've allocated funds to all the categories and started writing
cheques. Those five lakhs are a quarter of our sponsorship income,
we can't do without it," Agni shouted at Eeshan.

"I made the budget, dude, you think I don't understand where the
fuck this leaves us?"

"Hold the fuck up," Dhruv said, waving his arms. "How did we
budget and spend unapproved money? We run everything past
Kamath for verbal approval at the least before we move forward."

"I was told we had the money and that it was all settled, so I ran
with those numbers," Eeshan said, looking at Agni pointedly.

Dhruv sighed.

Agni had jumped the gun again, counting on getting through the
formalities later.

"Okay, so we're five lakhs down. What now?"

 "There's not much scope for cutting back or raising prices. Maybe
a grand or two here and there, nothing big."

"Why not? Start slashing allocations!" Agni demanded. "What

about those bullshit carnival games they put up outside the Academic
Blocks, they barely turn a profit. Or raise participation fees and
merchandise prices."

"The games are anchors. It draws people into the fest, drives
traffic to all our events. Getting rid of them would kill participation. And
yeah, we could bump up prices, but raise them too much and then
people just won't buy," Eeshan said with a shake of the head.

"More sponsors?" Riti asked.

Eeshan laughed dryly.

"I'll check with Sponsorship, but I'm pretty sure they've run down
every lead they've got. Expert was big for us, I don't see how we can
fill this gap."

"I'll talk to Kamath," Agni declared. "He's killing a sponsor for us,
the college can make up the difference."

Riti groaned inwardly.

Agni saw himself as being able to get things done with his
aggression. His minor victories that had come as people gave way to
get him to shut up had reinforced that self-image, but Riti could see
his capital running out, especially with the administration. Adults
could not stand a demanding and combative college student for very
long.

Besides, the fest was already getting twenty lakhs from the
Student Activities department. They'd fought their way up to this
number from the initial offer of twelve, and there wasn't much higher
to go.
 "Alright, you try that then," Dhruv told Agni. "Rest of you, work
Sponsorship over-time and see if there are corners that can be cut."

The door to the conference room opened, and Mahesh walked

out, swinging his backpack over his shoulder.

"Okay then, I suppose I'll be getting my money back. Next time,

try to figure out what you're doing first before wasting other people's
time, yeah?" he said, walking out.

"So, I guess that room is less soundproof than we thought, huh?"

Riti asked.
 3: A Fair Shot
"Hmm," said Aarav.

Varun fidgeted nervously in the cheap plastic chair.

"I get what you mean to say with your article, but it reads too
much like a Wikipedia page. Yes, you need to have everything
backed up by solid facts, but your article itself should be more than a
collection of facts, know what I'm saying?" Aarav said, turning away
from the computer screen.

"I think so," Varun said uncertainly.

Behind him, Navdha looked up from her phone. She hated not
being part of conversations. Aarav remembered the time one of The
Standard's alumni had dropped by the office when Navdha had
happened to be there. Aarav had found quietly hanging around
seniors easier than interacting with his own peers when he'd just
joined the media body, and thus become acquainted with the then-
fourth years who'd been on their way out. It was Donald, one such
now-graduated senior, who'd been in town and wanted to say hi to
Aarav. They'd chatted for a few minutes, and Navdha had got all
sulky after he'd left. She was offended that Donald had paid more
attention to Aarav, as if unable to digest that somebody might be
friends with anyone other than her.

Aarav scrolled through the piece again, the ancient Windows 7

machine struggling to respond to the mouse. He turned back to the
second-year writer.

"Figure out what you want to say first, get the story that you're
trying to tell clear in your head, and start writing that story. You then
bring your facts in to back it up. Don't list out your facts first and then
try to fill a story in between that. Now, as for the writing quality—"

The door to the office burst open.

 "Aarav, we need to talk," Samar said.

"Give me a minute, I'm just finishing up," Aarav told him, his
square, usually unexpressive face scrunching up in annoyance.

"Nah man, you have got to hear this. Give us a minute, kid,"
Samar replied, directing the last part at Varun.

Samar turned to Navdha and opened his mouth, but Aarav gave a
slight shake of his head to silence him. She would stay.

Navdha was one of the few Standard editors who was completely
invested in the work and had naturally been eyeing the Editor-in-Chief
and Managing Editor positions. She would have had a shot at it, but
the top two posts that brought with them a seat at the Student Council
table fell directly under the purview of the Student Activities
department and had a CGPA requirement that she didn't meet.

This bureaucratic hurdle that had taken away what she saw as her
well-earned right had led her down a path of resentment and
insecurity, and she now lived in constant fear of ending up with no
power. Aarav and Samar were the shoo-ins for the posts. Aarav was
universally liked, his principled cordial working methods leaving no
enemies behind. Samar might have been thrown under the bus if the
others weren't so afraid of his retribution. His intellect was
unquestionable, even if his morality wasn't. They both recognised the
situation with Navdha and were careful not to make it look like she
was being cut out of anything. Samar's motivation wasn't any concern
for her feelings as much as it was a recognition that she was a
favourite of the old Board and would be essential to the new one.

"Plug this in," said Samar, tossing a USB flash drive at Aarav.

The dramatic scene Aarav guessed he'd pictured in his head

didn't play out for a while as Aarav fumbled to find the slot at the back
of the CPU. The computer then took a good minute to throw up the
drive's contents.
 "It's Nikhil's drive, you can tell from the resume he left on it,"
Samar pointed out.

"Why do you have Nikhil's drive?" Navdha asked, walking up to

them and peering at the screen.

Nikhil had been a fellow writer and editor at The Standard until the
previous semester. He was insanely driven, getting work done
through sheer energy. At one point of time, he'd been in over a dozen
clubs. The problem was that he'd been too abrasive even for the
informal culture in MTU's student bodies, and he'd had rocky exits
from most of them. The Standard was no exception. He'd had an
expletive-laden argument with the Board and then been forced out.

"I was at Om Xerox getting a print-out, and you know, they have
their USB slots and mouse on the counter so we can open the
documents we need printed."

Om Xerox was a small shop in the centre of the academic area

that did the bulk of the printing work for the campus.

"I noticed someone had left their drive behind," he continued, "and
I was about to hand it over to the shopkeeper, but then I looked at the
screen, and I saw this."

He leaned over Aarav and clicked on a PDF in the root folder.

It was the application form for the Standard's EIC and ME posts.

"Why would Nikhil have this, nobody from the outside applies."
Aarav said.

Samar shook his head and sat down on the dirty, worn-out
mattress on the opposite desk. A small cloud of dust flew up.

Nobody knew where the mattress had been dragged in from, but it
looked less disgusting during the fests when you trudged into the
office at six am after an all-nighter, so it had stayed.
 "Nobody has ever applied, but they could," he said, and Aarav
could see he was fighting to keep the derision out of his voice as he
explained what was obvious to him.

All except two members of the Student Council were elected by

the Class Representatives of all the MTU sections. The exceptions
were the Editor-in-Chief and the Managing Editor of The Standard—
the Executive Board. They were selected by a panel headed by
Nagaraj Kamath, the Student Activities director, who supposedly
made his decision after weighing in the interviews and resumes of the
applicants. This process was a farce, as there had never been more
than one application for each of the posts. The Standard, knowing no
outsider could handle their organisation, conducted an internal
election for the EIC and ME positions, and the ones who won here
would be the only ones to apply formally.

"The applications are technically open to outsiders too," he

continued. "On the off-chance somebody actually applied, they
wouldn't normally stand a chance because they wouldn't have the
experience of our internal candidates or the recommendation of the
old Board. With Nikhil, however, it's a different story. He has Standard
experience, he was with us for two years. Hell, he has pretty much
any kind of experience anyone could have. More importantly, he's in
the Volunteer Corps, and they work closely with a lot of professors
and members of the administration. He could get some pretty
powerful people to put in a good word for him."

"Come on, Kamath wouldn't pick an outsider," Navdha said.

Aarav chewed on his lip.

"Maybe not, but he is definitely a wild card," he conceded. "I'm not

entirely sure if Kamath even realises we hold internal elections. He
might give Nikhil a fair shot."

Behind him, the PC suddenly crashed, throwing up the blue

screen of death before going black. The CPU fans that had been
adding a steady background hum stopped spinning.
 4: Slicking The Slope
"Okay, what are you thinking?" Vartika asked, putting her phone
face-down on the table.

Much as The Standard would have liked to think of itself as a

proper news organisation, the administration had them on a leash.
The official tag it brandished to get access to fests also meant that if
the college did not like something The Standard published, down it
would come. Also, nobody turned to The Standard to try to give voice
to criticisms. There was a college Facebook group that the Student
Council used for communicating with the student populace, which
was used for lashing out at the Council and the college. The Standard
did not come into the picture at all when it came to matters of
governance. At the end of the day, all this meant that they weren't a
real fourth estate that could raise a voice to power.

"Meet them on friendly grounds with softball interviews. Just get

them talking and on record—admin, SC, whoever. Make our
presence felt, make it normal for them to communicate through us,"
Aarav proposed.

"And become their mouthpiece? We'll be called out for being a PR

wing," his senior argued.

"Not if we're smart about it! Look at the situation right now, we
have no opportunity to say anything about anything, we can't really
publish about the issues that matter to the students. They can't
protest effectively, because neither the SC nor the administration
explains anything they do to them.

The plan is simple, we offer them a chance to get their side on

record. We won't be critical ourselves, to start with, but the comments
section always exists for others to be. We'll have given out
information at the least, as ammunition for those who want to criticise.
And in the long term, we can slowly transition to adding commentary.
Slip in a line of criticism here and there."
 Vartika shrugged.

"That's a long time horizon you're looking at, you only get one
year here. But okay, I don't see anything wrong with the plan."

"I want to start with the Academic Director for the assignment
pattern and the Council for the lab manuals. Can you get me the
green light from Rahul, please?"

As the EIC, Rahul had the final say when it came to anything
involving external communication, especially with the administration.
Their Managing Editor, after an initial flurry of enthusiasm, had gone
AWOL and was practically out of the picture. People put a lot of
themselves into student bodies, getting little in return, and sometimes
it emptied them.

Aarav hadn't wanted to pitch things to Rahul directly. He was a

good leader and was usually fair. He did, however, care more for
Navdha than for the rest of them, and tended to be extra proactive in
ensuring that no imbalances in power or opportunity were stacked up
against her. He'd have seen Aarav trying to talk to the Council and
administration as an effort to push ahead into his future role and act
without the involvement of his peers.

Aarav didn't see any other options, though. While Navdha was
one of the best editors and content creators they had, she didn't
share his passion for journalism. Nobody else did. He stood alone in
his efforts to push them towards having a more significant presence.
He was ready to give democracy its fair shot, but there were some
things he couldn't rely on the others for, and he was hoping Vartika
would see this.

"Okay, I'll give him a call."

"You're good to go," she told him a few minutes later, hanging up.

"Thanks!"
 Aarav headed for the door.

"And hey, Aarav?"

"Yeah?"

Vartika hesitated for a bit.

"Be careful around Samar, okay? He can be a little dangerous, he

doesn't exactly play by any rules."

Aarav was taken aback. A little dangerous was an

understatement. The occasional viciousness that Samar let slip
through scared him. There were no other good fits for the Executive
Board and you'd always want Samar on your side rather than against
you. But the fact that Vartika, of all people, had warned him was
surprising. She did almost always put the organisation before her
personal relations, but she was as tight with Samar as anybody could
be and he hadn't expected her to not be completely behind him.

"I'll keep an eye out," he assured her.

The office of the Academic Director was just on the opposite wing
of the building. The Standard was housed in a dusty, rectangular
room tucked away in a section that formed the wing of the aeroplane-
shaped building that was Academic Block 1. The location was prime
real estate. The Student Council and all the other important offices
were located here. It was close to the other academic blocks, where
classes were held, which gave the office value as a convenient place
to nap or get some work done when you needed access to a
computer.

Aarav walked slowly, staring out over the quadrangle in the centre
as he put his thoughts in order. He occasionally had to fight down
nervousness before meetings. He was a naturally awkward introvert,
but he'd managed to suppress this part of his personality in order to
be able to get work done. He never shied back from social situations
when The Standard demanded it, but would be glad when Samar
took over all the outside interactions and left him to deal with the
internal workings as the Managing Editor. The Standard was where
he was at home.

He stood outside the Academic Director's door for a few seconds.

SN Adhiraj, the lettering on the glass read. He was just about to
knock when the door to Nagaraj Kamath's cabin, that was adjacent to
Adhiraj's, opened and a short, smiling man walked out.

"Hi, sir," Aarav greeted Nakul Kumar, the Assistant Director of

Student Activities, next in command to Nagaraj Kamath.

Nakul Kumar was probably the most loved man in the

administration, at least as far as the student population was
concerned. While others gave in to students' demands following
varying levels of persuasion, Kumar was the only one who was
genuinely happy to give them the green light.

"Sir, do you have a minute?" Aarav asked suddenly. It struck him

that the Academic Director would default to a no, and Kumar might be
just what he needed to better his odds. Someone other than a
student sitting across the desk would make things easier.

"Sure, Aarav, tell me," Kumar beamed.

"You probably know that the new assignment pattern hasn't gone
down well with the students, and a huge part of that is because they
don't really understand why it's being done. We were thinking it might
be helpful to everyone if Adhiraj sir got a chance to explain it. We
could help out by doing an interview."

Twenty per cent of the students' grades came from four five-mark
quizzes. Earlier, they used to receive a set of questions to prep from
beforehand and, on the day of the test, would get one of these
questions at random. Last semester, however, they replaced this with
open-notebook tests with no shortlist of questions sent prior to the
assignment. Preparation was now copying down entire PPTs into
notebooks so they could then copy answers onto the answer sheet.
Most students did not enjoy being turned into copywriters like this,
and the college Facebook group was predictably filled with long rants
against the new system.

"Hmm, yes, that would be nice, but has he agreed to it?" Kumar
replied.

"I was just about to go ask him. I was hoping you could sit in too,
and discuss it with him."

"Sure, why not," Kumar said, already opening the Academic

Director's door.
 5: Stretching A Dollar
"Here you go."

Riti placed the paper cup of coffee in front of Agni.

The Convenor muttered a thank you and took a careful sip. Riti
drank from her own cup, trying to will the caffeine to kick in. It was
eight pm, but she wasn't sure how long they'd have to be in the office.
The last few months going into a fest were brutal at the best of times,
and the loss of Expert as a sponsor had only made it worse. It didn't
look like she would be getting a good night's sleep anytime soon.

Thankfully, there seemed to be more people assembled in the

office than usual. Prometheus was a difficult fest to pull off. Revels,
the college's cultural fest, had more people working on it. It took place
in March and work started right after a new Council entered office in
November, so everyone actually showed up and did their job. When it
was time for Prometheus, however, half the Senior Council members,
going into their fourth year, were either burnt out or too caught up in
the placement process. Some in the Junior Council also decided they
didn't want to run for Senior Council positions and stopped putting in
any effort. Riti knew she wanted to be the Cultural Secretary, though,
and had to pick up much of the slack. The good thing was that the
Junior Council members got a lot more free rein during the tech fest.

Riti looked around the room.

"Oh, hey Rahul," she said, noticing The Standard's EIC on the
couch at the far end of the room.

She was surprised to see him. The Standard didn't really take part
in much of the Council work. But Rahul was occasionally helpful, so
she was glad he was there.

"Eeshan, any progress on reworking the budget?" Dhruv began.

 "I've managed to buy us some time by tightening immediate
expenses. I talked some of our suppliers into taking payment after the
fest, so that gives us some liquidity. All Category Heads have been
told not to make spending decisions on their own. They'll have to
write up their expenses and bring them to us for approval. For the
most part, we won't be paying them upfront, they'll shell out from
pocket and we'll reimburse them later. But, we do need someone
from the Council to take care of this."

"I can handle it. I've worked with a lot of these events, so I'm
somewhat familiar with the requirements," Sanjana, the Vice-
President, said.

"They're not going to like this red tape," Darshan, the SC

President, warned. "A lot of legitimate requirements could be delayed.
Be considerate, approve everything as soon as you can."

Sanjana nodded.

Riti wished Darshan was around more. He'd been at the head of
the pack for much of the previous fest, and there was nobody who
could handle people as well as him. He seemed to know just the right
things to say to make people agree with him, and there'd been a lot of
explosive situations that had been defused by his deft touch.
Especially with everyone's nerves frayed and a hothead like Agni
spearheading the work, that was a handy skill. His grades had taken
a beating last semester, though, so Riti didn't blame him for trying to
catch up and get placed.

To her left, Agni was going through a draft of the budget. He

stopped at a six-digit number.

"What the fuck is Printing doing with this much money?" he

demanded.

"It has always been a bit of a mess," Dhruv said. "The Heads of all
the other categories are indiscriminate in what they send to be
printed, there is no formalised procedure for what is allowed. Printing
has no choice but to go with it".

"They can't need this much, though, come on," Agni argued.

"Well, yeah," Dhruv admitted. "Like I said, there's no discipline

when it comes to what they receive. The Printing Category Heads
don't really get any say over what goes to press, they have to accept
whatever is sent to them."

"Let's fix that, then," Riti proposed. "We know there's a lot of bloat.
Let's take some time and establish clear guidelines for what gets
printed and what doesn't. Scrapping the posters for events is long
overdue, for example. Everyone just prints those because they can,
nobody really looks at the bulletin boards."

"Since you brought up the posters, scrapping them could actually

help in more ways than one," Rahul added, getting up from the couch
and walking over to the oval table in the centre. "We tried to use the
digital board for some of our fest content last time around. Kamath
doesn't have anything against that, but everything does have to the
staff operating it through him. That whole process takes way too long
for it to be useful, fest content needs to go out quickly."

The digital board was a giant screen strategically placed between

the three Academic Blocks, where most of the fest activities would be
anchored.

"You could use the board for some of Social Media's content,
sponsors' ads, whatever," Rahul continued. "If you could convince
Nagaraj Kamath to hand over the board, you can put one of your
people at the control desk and get things up on time. The Student
Activities department wants to cut down on print, right? So if you tell
Kamath you'll get rid of posters completely, but you'll need this as a
publicity medium to make up for it, he'll agree."

"That could work," Darshan mused.

 "Give me a day. I'll talk to someone from Printing and come up
with a draft of the guidelines. Does that work?" Riti asked.

"Go ahead," Agni approved. "I'll talk to Kamath in the meantime.

Eeshan, we haven't mentioned the board to any of our sponsors,
have we?"

"No," the Treasurer said. "We've mentioned logo placements on

backdrops and brochures, but not the digital board. We haven't really
used that before."

"The Sponsorship team is still trying to get sponsors. We should

take another look at what we're offering and try to sweeten the deal
as much as we can."

Eeshan looked sceptical.

"I'm not really sure if there's enough we can do to make a

difference."

"The digital board gives us more content options that could look
attractive to sponsors, at least for a lot of the smaller businesses who
are more agile and open to experimentation. And just making the list
of offerings longer will make it look like a better deal. There is no
downside," Agni argued.

"I guess, yeah," Eeshan gave in.

"What else can we add, apart from the board?" Sanjana asked.

Riti looked at Rahul, who was back on the couch tapping at his
phone.

"Rahul, how many newsletters do you guys print?" she asked.

He looked up.

"Five hundred a day."

 "Do you have space for sponsor logos?"

He suddenly had his guard up. The Standard operated

independently, but they were still part of the SC. There were differing
opinions about just how much of their resources they were obligated
to use for the Council's benefit.

"Not in the newsletter's present form. We could consider some

changes, however—"

"You guys have a liveblog too, right?" Agni cut in. "That should be
easier, you can put ads there."

"Possibly, but what I was saying was, it'd be a drastic change to

the way we normally do things. We don't advertise anything as a
policy. Also, this is not really my decision to make, my juniors are the
ones who'll be working this fest, so it'll be their call."

"Can you take this to them?" Riti asked him.

The Standard's current limbo annoyed her. There was no clarity

on who was in charge, and Rahul could only mediate for the
organisation till their new Board was formed. The Standard's term
calendar wasn't in sync with the Council's. The Standard's new Board
would soon take over internally, but the Council elections only took
place in November, so Rahul would still be the official representative
at this table till then.

"I'll talk to them," he said. "But no promises."

 6: Nothing To Do
"Okay, let's get started," Rahul said, thumping the table on which
he was perched.

The office was packed. Ten of the editors were there, along with
two Board members. The only remaining responsibility of the
outgoing Board was facilitating the elections.

"First item, the Council is in a little bit of a budget crunch for

Prometheus and is looking for help from any quarters," Rahul began.
"They're asking if we can throw in anything towards the offerings for
potential sponsors. Product placements, ads, whatever. I know we
haven't had discussions about the new Board, but since it's going to
be your fest, it's best you all take a call on this."

"Advertisements?" Aarav said sceptically. "Definitely not on our

website, right?"

The Standard was funded by the college, so they didn't have to

run ads for revenue. There was a pride they took in keeping the site
clean.

"They're just thinking of in the fest coverage," Rahul said.

"So, just the newsletters?"

"Yeah. Maybe sponsor logos in the newsletter. And the liveblog, I

don't think they have anything concrete in mind yet, so we can
propose something from our end."

They published eight-page newsletters on each of the fest's four

days. The liveblog was a steady stream of occasionally bad jokes and
light-hearted commentary on what was happening around the fest,
sent in by the writers who covered all events and wrote compiled
reports.
 "Do we have to? I don't like the idea of ads on our stuff," Navdha
said.

There was a general murmur of agreement.

"Well, no," Rahul replied. "But it wouldn't hurt your relationship

with the SC if you gave them something. They might resent it if you
turned them down without a good reason."

"Hold on, whatever we give them, it goes into the sponsorship

deals?" Samar said.

Rahul nodded.

"And if the sponsorship deal says that The Standard is going to

print newsletters with their logos on it, then newsletters will have to be
printed, right?"

"We're printing newsletters anyway, what do you mean?" Aarav

frowned.

"We're printing them now, but Kamath has already cut our
numbers by half from the last fest. We don't know when he's going to
axe it entirely. Look at the Editorial Board, what's the guarantee he
won't do the same to us?"

The college was trying to go paperless as part of a greenwashing

campaign—the yearbooks that the college Editorial Board used to
print had been the first casualty. They now had to make PDFs that
they distributed on USB drives. This not only made it a worse
experience for the readers and was less rewarding for the creators as
they didn't get a physical copy to be proud of, but was also ironically
less green. The college conveniently chose to ignore the fact that
thousands of USB drives had a larger environmental footprint and
generated more e-waste than printed copies ever could.

"So if our newsletters were in the sponsorship deal for the fest
going forward, they couldn't cut down our printing? If there's even a
half-chance that works, I say we go for it! Losing prints will kill us,
nobody's going to care about our newsletters if they're online, we
need them in people's hands physically," Navdha put in.

"Yeah, the logos could help in the future. You guys would have to
give up maybe half a page for these. Are you okay with that?" Rahul
asked

"We struggle to come up with content for the second page

anyway," Navdha pointed out. "If we have a little less space to fill,
could be a good thing even."

"Any other thoughts?" Rahul asked, looking around at the rest of

the editors.

"As the one usually tasked with the burden of filling up that second
page, I'm all for this idea," Rhea laughed.

Rhea was a quiet, good-natured editor, positioned to be the new

Reporting Head.

"What about the liveblog?" Rahul prompted.

Nobody said anything.

"Putting the logos in our newsletter ought to be enough of a

gesture. If they're happy enough with that, I don't see why we should
jump to give them more," Samar finally reasoned, interpreting the
silence.

"Okay then, I'll give them that for now, and if they press on the
liveblog, I'll bring it back to you. Next, Aarav, you've got the interview
with Adhiraj, right?"

"Yeah, I'll pick a writer for it. And maybe one of the other editors
can go with them, I wouldn't mind not doing the actual interview
myself."

He looked at Samar pointedly. It'd be good for him to make

himself known around the college. Plus, it'd save Aarav some stress.
 "I'd appreciate an introduction to a Council member for the lab
manuals story though, Rahul," he added.

As another part of the no-printing plan, the college had worked

with the Council to replace printed lab manuals with PDFs. However,
this hadn't worked out well for everyone. Non-IT branches like
Mechanical had no computers in the labs and had simply made
students print out the PDFs, defeating the purpose of the initiative.

Aarav had proposed they focus on the positive—the IT branches

worked on computers for all their labs, and this move had actually
saved them some money. This approach for the article would help get
the SC talking and give out information on what had gone on behind
the scenes. The Standard could slip in the criticism at the end.

"Fine. Remind me tomorrow. Last thing, the new Board. It's time
all of you started talking amongst yourselves, we're thinking two
weeks from now would be good for the election. Is that fine?"

"Yeah, about the Board…" Aarav said and glanced at Samar. "We
might have a problem."

Samar hadn't wanted to let anyone know. They wouldn't be of help

anyway, and he was afraid of others getting ideas. The internal
election for the Executive Board was binding only because everyone
believed it was. He and Samar had the votes, and he knew Titirsha
was going down. That should be the end of the story. True, even she
probably wouldn't violate the sanctity of their tradition by trying to get
in via the interview. She had that much of The Standard's integrity.
But he just didn't want another possible complication.

Aarav had disagreed. He was always for full-disclosure and

wanted to loop everyone else in. Samar hadn't pressed the point too
hard. He was as scared of Aarav as he could be of anyone, and had
reason to keep him happy. Samar could control people, but he didn't
have their respect like Aarav did. Right now, he needed the editors on
his side. He needed their votes. They would back him as long as
Aarav did too, but if they ever went up against each other, he knew
who they'd stand with.

"What problem?" Vartika said, sitting up.

She stayed out of the way of routine stuff, but problems got her
interested.

"We think Nikhil might apply for our Executive Board via the public
application," Aarav said.

"Never in the history of The Standard has—"

"We're a four-year-old media body, Vartika. We don't have a

history," Samar interrupted impatiently.

"We have recent history, and that's better because it's in memory
and not textbooks."

"Hasn't anyone ever told you not to bounce history and—"

"Not to bounce history and recent off each other in the same
sentence, yes, we've all watched The Newsroom. Just shut the fuck
up." Vartika snapped.

Samar grinned in response, enjoying the banter.

"We know no outsider has ever applied before," Aarav stepped in,
steering the conversation back on track. "But Nikhil is former-
Standard, so he's not entirely unqualified. And he has connections
with a lot of faculty members."

"Why do you think he's going to apply, Aarav?" Vartika asked.

"He'd left his USB drive at Om Xerox and the application form was
open on it," Samar said.

"Ha, that form is public. It gets sent to all the Class

Representatives," said a voice from near the door.
 Samar looked at Siddharth, annoyed. That smug tone aside, it
was a pretty useless comment. Sid, now in his final year, had joined
as an editor two semesters ago. Third-year was when people either
became Board members or left clubs because they didn't. Sid was an
exception, having come over to The Standard from the Public
Relations team of Manipal Matters, pulled by close personal
relationships with some of their Board members.

The hope had been that he'd build up a PR team here. But he
hadn't actually done any PR work that Samar had seen. Or any work
at all. He seemed to just hang around for the joy of showing people
that he knew stuff and to enjoy the say he got in things without
actually putting in the work to earn the right to.

"Yes, Sid, we know it's public, but the fact that he's gone to the
effort of downloading it and printing it out seems significant."

"We can't stop him from applying," Rahul cut in. "It is technically
open to everyone. But don't worry, Kamath takes the old Executive
Board's input, I don't think we're going to have an upset."

"Maybe not, but it is still a risk, I'm not comfortable with this
uncertainty."

"I don't think it's ideal either, it's a total dick move on his part. But
there's nothing we can do about it. He's welcome to give it a shot, so
I'd say there is no point in you worrying about it," Rahul insisted.

Of course, Samar knew there wasn't much else Rahul could tell
them. He wasn't sure if Rahul himself believed that there was no
reason to worry, but he definitely did accept that there was nothing to
be done about it. Samar didn't.
 7: Suicide Songs In Parking Lots
"Shotgun," Vartika called, following Samar towards the parking lot.

"You in?" Rahul asked Aarav.

"I don't really like the place," Aarav replied.

"Come on," Navdha insisted. "It's not the weekend, so there won't
even be a crowd, if that's what you're worried about. Hang out for a
bit."

Aarav didn't really care much for her invitation. Navdha always
talked like they were great friends but never backed it up with action.
When out with this bunch, she'd get drunk fast and then not talk to
anyone other than Rahul. But everyone else was going, and he
thought it'd be good to try and socialise a little.

"Fine," he relented.

"Let's walk," Siddharth suggested, pointing in the direction of the

back gate. It opened onto the main road, and the nightclub was just
half a kilometre from there.

When they stepped inside DT, it took a moment for Aarav's eyes
to adjust to the pitch-black interiors. Bollywood music blared as they
moved towards the back.

Aarav glanced at the shrine in a corner, a small oil lamp lit in front
of an idol. It amused him that they'd try to bring God into DT, the
symbol of Manipal's degeneracy. Cigarette smoke hung in the air
perpetually. On weekends, guys would have to pay a cover fee for the
privilege of squeezing in among all the sweaty bodies. Pay they
would, drawn by the lure of cheap alcohol and hopes of hook-ups.
There wasn't much effort put towards maintenance here, and those
who'd seen the filthy club in daylight said that the darkness was a
blessing. Only the very desperate ventured into the toilets, choosing
to take a leak in a restaurant across the street rather than risk a UTI
at DT. People only headed towards the washrooms to take drunk
mirror selfies in the handwash area, a signature shot for social media.

Why they'd want to try and draw God's attention to this place was
beyond him.

But then again, people did say that DT was short for Drinking
Temple. He supposed that there was something beyond rationality
here; people dulling their senses and giving in to primal lust under
cover of darkness, a place to lose civility and dignity and let more
animal instincts take over.

"Over here," Vartika waved at them from a long table near the
door to the bar. She'd driven down here with Samar and was already
sipping a beer. Aarav dropped his bag at the table and followed the
others through the doorway.

The small room that housed the bar and billing counter was the
only place inside DT that was brightly lit. A red sign beside the
counter declared that writing on the walls would attract a fine, but
graffiti still covered every inch. Aarav had never understood why they
would have a problem with that. The heritage in the names scrawled
on the walls was a large part of what made this place special.
Leaving your mark there at the end of last nights in Manipal before
you graduated was a drunken celebration of making it through
college, a tribute to all the good times.

Aarav tore his eyes away. When he left this place, his name
wouldn't be up there. He wouldn't have much to celebrate or anything
he'd care to remember.

"Cranberry Breezer," he told the bartender.

He took his time heading back to the table, taking long sips of his
drink.

"What! You don't know about Annamalai?" Vartika was shouting at

Varsha.
 Varsha would become The Standard's new Public Relations head
—if she cared to apply. She flitted in and out of the organisation, her
priority being a robotics student project. Her main qualification for the
role was that she knew a shitload of people.

"No, what are you talking about? Name sounds familiar, though. Is
he that Manipal cop who gets invited to give speeches at college
events?" Varsha asked.

"Yeah, he was the Superintendent. We have one article about him

on our site; it's a few years old now. And I swear to God, ten per cent
of all our traffic is to that article. We just couldn't figure out why, until
recently."

"Why?"

"Practically every single day," Sid took over, "some fucker

somewhere Googles 'Annamalai height', 'Annamalai wife', 'Annamalai
married?'"

"God bless them for the site views. I guess he's kind of a looker,
but shit, people are crazy about him!" Vartika said.

"How'd you guys even find this, though?" Varsha asked.

"There's a section where you can see what search terms are
leading people to your site," Sid explained. "I spend a lot of time
looking at the stats there."

"Maybe you could find a way to actually make yourself useful

instead," Samar said, just loudly enough for Sid to hear.

There were always people who slacked off or had a bit of an ego,
but something about Sid just seemed to trigger Samar.

Aarav didn't want to stay around for this. The editors wouldn't
make much of Samar being a dick in informal settings like this,
especially since they all kind of knew Sid didn't really contribute
much.

Aarav went back to the bar and asked for another Breezer. He'd
tried alcohol a few times, hoping to loosen up and get out of his mind
enough to enjoy himself a little, but it turned out that he wasn't what
they would call a happy drunk. The melancholy just got worse, so he
stayed sober.

Sid walked up to him.

"Your friend doesn't like me very much," he said, lighting a

cigarette. He was a smallish man with an unkempt beard encircling
his face. His baggy clothes almost hid his growing potbelly.

"To be fair, he doesn't like a lot of people very much," Aarav

commented. "Don't let it get to you."

"I don't," Sid chuckled. "Not sure what he thinks he's getting from
this. Anyway, fuck that. How's everything, kid?"

"It's alright," Aarav shrugged. "It's kinda hard to operate with the
power vacuum. Your batch is out, but we don't formally have powers
yet. The writers haven't been promoted to editors either, so handling
all the articles is on us too. I'll be glad when we form the new Board."

"Fuck that, man, I don't care. I was asking about you. You don't
talk to me anymore."

"Sorry. Work just takes over everything, you know."

"No, I don't. Why is everything about The Standard?"

Aarav coughed as Sid blew out a puff of smoke.

"I don't know what to tell you, there just isn't anything else going
on," he said.

Sid sighed.
 "You care too much about all of this."

"I suppose, but it's a worthy cause to give myself to. We have
some of the best writers in college, and we could be doing so much
more as a media body. Four years ago, Athyu created this
organisation wanting to do great things. But I'm the only one since
him who still wants that. Sure, some of the people before me were
competent, The Standard had its moments. But they only did good
things great at best, never tried for great things. They don't have
much of a legacy."

Athyu was The Standard's founder. He'd broken away from

Manipal Matters in his second year to start this new media body
affiliated with the college. On the way out, he'd also taken some of
Matters' best people, kickstarting a feud that took a few years to quiet
down to just non-violent competition.

"Legacy," Sid scoffed. "Let me tell you a story. Back when I started
at MTU, there was this one dude who'd made it big. He ran PR for
half the organisations in town and the other half were begging him to
run theirs too. The club culture was a lot different before, way less
professional. This guy basically wrote the PR handbook everyone still
follows today, changed the game. Everyone in every college in
Manipal knew of him. Do you know who I'm talking about, Aarav?"

"No."

"Exactly! Nobody even fucking knows his name now. What I'm
saying is, this shit is a distraction. It's not going to fill the hole in your
life, it cannot replace whatever it is you're trying to replace."

Aarav wiped his face with the back of his hand, feeling the day-old
stubble scratching his skin.

Sid took one last drag and dropped the butt of the cigarette down
before putting it out with the toe-end of his slippers.

"Think about it," he said. "I'll see you back there."

 Aarav followed him away from the bar but then walked past their
table, heading out towards the front door, fidgeting with the black Lord
of the Rings replica ring he wore on his left hand. It was drizzling as
he stepped outside, and he took a step forward into the rain. Water
trickled lightly down his untidy hair. He noticed Samar's car to his left,
parked at an awkward angle.

Aarav walked up to it and noticed that the back door wasn't fully
shut, and it opened as he pulled at the handle. He got his phone out
and tried to unlock it, but it was too wet from the rain for his fingerprint
to register. He ducked down into the car, settling into the back before
using his shirt sleeve to wipe the water off the screen. He texted
Samar to let him know his car was unlocked.

Aarav didn't feel like going back inside. The thought of being
around people who could just…be put him off. He was also afraid
they'd start dancing. He couldn't dance for shit.

He reached into the pocket of his faded jeans and fished out a
pair of earphones. It took him a minute to untangle it. He remembered
a passage from Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat where he'd
talked about how ropes somehow always managed to get themselves
tangled. You could lay a piece of rope out completely straight, Jerome
had claimed, and if you dared to turn your back on it for a minute,
you'd be greeted with an impossible knot when you turned back.
Earphones were the twenty-first-century equivalent.

"Hey!"

"Hey," he said, zoned back in immediately.

"What, not fun enough for you inside?" Varsha teased.

"Oh uh, it was just a little too loud," he said, pulling out an earbud
and moving in to make space for her.

She bent down and pulled her slight frame into the car. The cabin
light gave her pale skin a yellow glow. She wiped her face with her
sleeve. The rain was coming down a little heavier now, and her long,
dark hair was damp.

"Question," Aarav said. "You are going to apply for PR head,

right?"

"Why do you always have to talk shop, man?" Varsha groaned

"You're the second person to say something like that today," Aarav
smiled.

"I'm not surprised, you're a workaholic. But I'm buzzed, and

buzzed Varsha does not care about work," she declared.

"Alright, alright," Aarav said, putting up his hands defensively.

"What are you listening to?" she asked, after a moment's pause.

"Fall Out Boy."

"Wow, you never outgrew your emo phase," she laughed.

"I discovered them pretty late," he said, "so I'm actually still getting
into it."

Varsha leaned over to look at his phone, studying the album art.
Her hair brushed against his face, and he caught a whiff of her
shampoo underneath the DT smell that had already settled on her.

"I think I've listened to this new album. I was a little unimpressed,
it seemed a little pedestrian," she said.

"It comes off that way at first, doesn't seem up to their usual poetic
standards. But it's actually pretty clever when you listen closer."

"I never know what their songs mean, they're too twisted."

"True. That's what I like, you know. You make a guess at it, you
interpret it in a way that connects with you, make it relatable. Of
course, if you actually look it up, you'll find out it isn't what you
thought it meant, but that's a different issue."

"What's this one about then? The video had some camels dancing
around or something, yeah?"

"They were llamas. I think it's about Pete's suicide attempt, when
he almost ODed in his car," Aarav said.

"Wow. Why do they have animals and shit then, I don't get it. Wait,
which one is Pete, is he the cute one with the blonde hair or the emo-
looking tattooed guy?"

"The emo-looking guy, but he's cuter than Patrick, come on."

"No way. Look at his sweet little baby face, he's adorable!"

There was a rapping of knuckles on the glass. Aarav looked up to

see Samar peering in at them.

Varsha opened the door.

"Just saw your text, thanks for the heads-up," Samar told Aarav.
"What are you guys doing in there?"

Aarav got off from the other side.

"Just talking about suicide songs," Varsha said.

 8: Edges Of Balconies
Riti poured a generous amount of gin into her plastic cup and
topped it off with some Sprite.

The night was still young and people were just trickling into the
apartment. The fairy lights strung against the walls threw soft moving
shadows as a speaker played some Hindi music softly.

She hadn't wanted to be at this house party, but her roommate

had insisted.

"You've been working too much," she had chided. "You'll end up
friendless if you're not careful."

It would have been hard to run away from her own house anyway,
so Riti had relented.

"Riti! I need to talk to you."

She sighed. So much for getting away from work.

"Yeah?"

She turned to Nihal.

"We've been trying to talk to someone in the Council for ages, but
we've been getting the go-around," he complained.

"And we here refers to…"

"The Manipal Birders Group," Nihal reminded her.

The Birders Group were a bunch of enthusiasts united by one

common interest. Their primary activity was an early Sunday morning
bird walk where they ventured into the more forested areas of the
town to catch glimpses of Manipal's numerous bird species.
 Riti believed him when he said he had been getting the go-around
—he was usually quite nice but sounded fairly fed-up at the moment.

"What did you want to talk about?" Riti prompted.

"The Highway Authority is planning to widen the Manipal main

road, and they'll cut down all the trees lining it. We need to get them
to stop."

"Uh, Nihal, we're just the Student Council," Riti said, taken aback.

"Yeah, but it's Manipal. The university has a strong voice with the
local government at least. You have access to the college
administration, you can get the point across."

"Sorry, I'm a little lost here; let's back up. What is the point, why do
you need the road widening plans dropped?"

"Those trees that'll be axed have been there for decades! There
are like a dozen species of birds nesting there, a lot of them will just
die and the rest won't have anywhere to go. This is a sensitive
ecosystem, and these are the last few trees left in this area," Nihal
explained, always ready to go off when it came to this subject.

"Okay, look, of course this is a good cause, but I honestly don't

see the Council being able to do much. We can't go up to the
administration and make them rouse the local government and the
Highway Authority," Riti said.

"I know it's not easy, Riti. Many of us in the Group have fought
battles like this. We know how low environmental concerns are on
everybody's lists. But we have to try."

"Even if the college admin was moved to act, it's not like
government authorities are going to listen."

"Riti, please, can you at least consider it seriously before shutting

me down? I know that the Council doesn't give a fuck about us, but I
wouldn't be coming to you if it wasn't important," Nihal pleaded.
 "Hey, come on, that's not true, who said that we don't care?"

"It is true, but it's fine. The Birders Group doesn't play the college
games, we don't have a fest presence, we don't need funding, none
of that. We're a simple bunch, we just want to go on our walks and
look at some birds. So, we don't care that you don't care, normally.
But this is not about us, and I know that at least some of you don't
want to ignore real issues."

"I'm sorry," Riti sighed. "You're right, I should take it seriously. But
this is not the best time, we're all stretched so thin with the fest
coming up."

Nihal made an exasperated sound.

"The fest!" he said, shaking his head. "No offence, but is that
really all that you think the Council should be about? Everyone struts
around being busy and looking important, and for what? A bullet point
on a CV? The lives of actual living beings are at stake here. One of
the trees we're going to lose, can you believe that it's around seventy-
five years old? Are you going to tell me that something like that tree,
sheltering thousands of birds for decades and decades, is less
important than your four-day fest? That it matters so little you can't
make the time to do something about it? I'm not asking you to
promise results, Riti, but don't you even want to try?"

Riti took a swig of her drink.

"Okay," she said, giving in. "I'll see what I can do."

"Thank you," Nihal said, walking back to his friends in the corner.

"What was that about?" Dhruv asked, appearing at her shoulder.

"I'll tell you later," Riti brushed it off, her eye caught by a rising
commotion at the far end of the hall.
 Three people encircled an agitated guy. His hands moved widely
as he talked, and the others seemed to be trying unsuccessfully to
calm him down.

"Girish, you're acting crazy right now," she heard one of the three
say.

"That doesn't look good," Dhruv frowned.

With a sudden leap, Girsh wrenched open the balcony door and
was outside in an instant.

"Fuck you," he cried, his voice now loud enough to carry back to
Riti. "I've had enough of all you bastards."

"Jesus Christ," Dhruv said, rushing over, Riti a few steps behind
him.

Girish had made a threatening move to climb over the railings and
go off the balcony, but his friends managed to wrestle him down.

"Get a fucking grip!" one of them told him as he started crying and
struggling against the hands that held him down.

"They have it under control for now, we should give him some
space," Riti whispered to Dhruv, and they slipped back into the
house.

The few people inside were standing around awkwardly, unsure of

what to do. Riti's roommate was conveniently absent, fashionably late
to her own party.

"What the hell was that?" Riti asked Dhruv, turning up the music to
drown out any voices from the balcony.

The General Secretary shrugged.

"People are crazy sometimes, we'll never know what is happening

in their heads."
 "Gotta say, that scared me, when it looked like he was going to
jump. We don't need another of those," Riti replied with a grimace.

Dhruv winced too.

The memorial service for a second-year student they had

attended this semester was still fresh in their mind. MTU wasn't
particularly bad when it came to mental health. It even provided free
counsellors, and especially since the suicide, the Council and the
administration had been working on publicising them and urging
students to seek help when needed.

But, she supposed, at the end of the day, there was only so much
anyone else could do. It was a big problem that wouldn't go away
overnight. Manipal was a fun, wild place to most of them, and that
made it easy to forget that loneliness and academic pressures and
whatever else still lurked around.

She watched as a subdued Girsh was firmly marched out of the

house. She couldn't help but feel a little curious about what the deal
was there. The glances that the others shot at him told her she wasn't
alone in that.

She reached out to the speaker and turned the volume up again.
 9: Footwear As Signs Of Civility
Samar picked up his glass of Imperial Blue and took a sip. He
paid attention to the bitter taste and waited for the warmth from the
whiskey. Everyone forced themselves to like the taste of alcohol in
order to become inebriated, but Samar never got drunk. He didn't like
the idea of not possessing all his mental faculties. He took pleasure in
drinking just enough to feel the poison begin to work, as a way to
remind himself that he was the one in control.

Here's someone not in control, he thought, as he turned from the

bar and saw Shaleen stagger towards him. Her clothes seemed a
little too good for DT—a short black dress patterned with white
flowers, earrings, heels, lipstick. But then she herself was a little too
good for this town too.

"Samar, I didn't know you drank," his classmate slurred.

"I drink, I just don't get drunk," he told her.

"You are wasting good alcohol, then, bitch," she said, grabbing his
glass and downing the entire thing before he could even react.

"Bleh," she said. "I take it back, that was not good alcohol, you
miser. Buy me a nicer drink."

"How much have you had already, you seem—"

"No," she stopped him, slapping a palm against his chest. "I am
fine. It's none of your business anyway. Now, are you going to drink
with me or not?"

Samar considered it. Despite her assertion, he didn't think she

was far away from breaching capacity. She was the smartest person
he'd ever known, but all her judgement deserted her when alcohol
was involved. She often had to practically be carried out of clubs.
 But he also knew that if she wanted another drink, she'd get it
despite him. He turned back to the bar and considered the options.
She'd be throwing it all up anyway, but he still used the last of his
cash for some Bacardi Limon. He got two small drinks and diluted
them with Sprite, hoping she wouldn't notice how little alcohol was in
the mix.

She clinked her glass against his and gulped it down.

"You're not here alone, are you?" he asked her.

"I was out with some old classmates, but some of them started
hitting on me, so I left," she said, rolling her eyes. She had a
delightfully disdainful eye-roll.

"It's dark in here, they probably didn't notice how ugly you are," he
joked. She knew she was far from it.

He wasn't surprised she'd been hit on, especially with the drinks
flowing. She wasn't single, but that didn't stop some guys from trying
anyway. The incentive to flirt was a product of the chance of success
times the attractiveness of the girl. The first might be low, but Shaleen
was a bombshell, so it evened out and made it worthwhile. And that
was even without them being smart enough to fully comprehended
her brilliance.

"I need to go to the washroom," she announced.

She stumbled as she turned, and Samar held her arm to steady
her.

"Across the street?" he asked.

Shaleen had an almost obsessive sense of hygiene. She, of all

people, wouldn't have used the DT washroom. But there were other
two-person activities that went on in there, and he needed to confirm
that she just had to pee.
 "Ew, of course. I'd rather wet my pants than go here," she said,
disgusted at the mere thought.

Samar smiled and walked her out.

"Hold on, where's your other shoe?" he said suddenly, noticing it

missing.

"Huh?"

She bent down to look and promptly threw up.

"Ah, Jesus," Samar muttered, tightening his grip on her so she

didn't fall forward.

He waited for her to straighten up before leading her to his car.

"Try not to throw up inside, okay?" he said, easing her into the
front seat.

He pulled out a few tissues from the dashboard and dapped her
lips.

A few flecks of vomit were spattered against her shins. Shaleen

didn't even go barefoot in her own bathroom, he remembered her
telling him once. She had rubber slippers that got a wash every time
she did—which was around four times a day. Her feet never touched
the ground, except here she was now, having walked through mud
and whatever else.

Shaleen, the pinnacle of the human species, brought down to

common indignity, just another parcel of flesh. How could lesser
beings hope to contend with this vice if she could not?

Or maybe he was just missing something. If she thought this an

okay way to be, that it was worth it, what grounds did he have to
dispute that? If truth always triumphs, then what triumphs must be the
truth, and Shaleen would define what the right things were.
 "Do you know how expensive it was?" she said suddenly.

She was talking about her footwear.

"Stay here, I'll see if I can find it," he told her.

He'd be looking for a black heel with straps around the ankle.
Samar was more of a shoe person himself. He did not like how much
of Manipal went about with exposed feet: tan-lines, dirt, unkempt
toes. But Shaleen maintained herself well. Plus, she had delicate feet
that blistered with shoes, so Samar didn't judge her for her footwear.
Also, like she said, they were expensive, so he supposed he couldn't
look down his nose at them.

He sighed and went to search for it, some sort of reverse Prince
Charming for the most un-Disney princess there could be.
 10: The People You Know
Professor Shenoy hitched his trousers up and peered at the class
over the top of his spectacles. As he took in the suppressed glee as
his pupils passed the sheet of paper around the classroom, a vague
feeling that he might have messed up seemed to strike him.

Attendance was a constant battlefront. MTU didn't trust students

to act in their own best interests, which, all things considered, was not
the worst assumption to make. Hence a mandatory minimum
attendance of seventy-five per cent. This requirement was a powerful
and sometimes the only effective tool professors could wield to keep
the bunch of oft unruly undergraduates in check. Most people didn't
really need to attend lectures to pass or even to pass with good
grades, and making it to three out of every four classes was just too
much for them. The professors, therefore, had to be on the watch for
proxy attendance during roll calls. People got away with a couple of
counts of fraud every few classes, but that was pretty much it.

Except for now. The professor was new, so they didn't really know
him and, more importantly, he didn't know them. For whatever
reason, he had decided not to do a roll call. Instead, he'd passed
around a blank sheet of paper and asked everyone to write their roll
numbers on it. Usually, the risk of being caught trying to answer your
friend's roll-call was a deterrent, but with that out of the way, the class
went wild.

When the paper was passed back to him, Shenoy realised the
number of roll numbers on it far exceeded the number of people in
the class. In a desperate attempt to salvage the situation, he began
reading out from the sheet to eliminate the fraudulent entries. The bell
went off right then, and the back of the class, ever the bravest,
sensed weakness in his feeble voice. They rushed towards the door,
their footsteps drowning out his protesting squeals. The rest of the
class followed.
 Aarav felt a twang of sympathy, but not enough of it to stop him
from walking out the door with the others.

"Hey, hold up," Samar said.

He was in the Computer Science branch too and his classroom

was on the same floor.

"Yeah?"

"Wait, let's get outside," he said, falling into step beside Aarav.

They followed the crowd out of the building on to the wide bridge
connecting the second floor of Academic Block 5, which was built on
lower ground, to the ground floor of the main campus. Samar walked
over to the side, away from the rush of people and leaned against the
railings lightly.

"Is Varsha going to apply for PR?" he asked Aarav.

"I don't know," Aarav answered. "She hasn't talked to me about it."

"Neither of us know enough relevant people to run PR, we need

her," Samar stressed.

"I don't know," Aarav replied.

It seemed like he said I don't know a lot.

"Sure," he continued, "I hope she does go for it. But it's up to her,
and we'll be fine either way. The Standard has gotten by without a PR
head before."

"I wouldn't have expected you, of all people, to be okay with just
getting by," Samar said, leaning towards him seriously.

His dark brown eyes drilled into Aarav's. He had half a foot on him
and probably weighed at least ten kilos more, with an athlete's build
that dominated Aarav's thin frame. "Our PR game has been shit. We
have nothing going for us other than the official tag. Look at the Teri
Miko and Zaeden concert, Manipal Matters got to interview them, and
we couldn't even get the organisers on the phone. And that's not just
a one-off."

"I'm not arguing that. I just meant it's not the end of the world if
Varsha doesn't apply. One of us can handle it."

"Fuck no," Samar snorted. "You can't just become good at Public
Relations overnight. It's entirely a networking game. The people you
know, the people who know you, the people you're seen with, the
people who talk about you to other people. That is all that counts in
this town, my friend. And that girl, she is on the leaderboards."

"Why do you have to make everything sound so heartlessly

material?" Aarav sighed.

"It's a cold world, brother," Samar grinned.

"Fine, okay, I'll talk to her. But," he added quickly, seeing the
satisfaction on Samar's face, "it'll just be a gentle nudge of
encouragement, nothing more."

"Yeah yeah, tell yourself whatever you have to. Oh, by the way,
you know who would have a better idea of what Varsha's going to
do?"

"Who?"

"Navdha," Samar said.

Aarav raised an eyebrow.

"I don't think she's close to Varsha, what do you mean?"

"You remember a couple of months back during the summer

vacation when we all had to privately message the seniors to discuss
our own Board positions?"
 "Yeah, I remember," Aarav said.

These informal sessions over WhatsApp had been conducted

under the pretence of helping the editors get a feel for the kind of
work that came with different Board positions. But Aarav suspected
that the real reason was that the seniors wanted to find out what
posts they would each go for. They could then either help the person
get appropriate experience if they approved or push them in a
different direction if they didn't.

"I'm certain that some Board member has leaked those

conversations to our dear future Writing Head. Now, which Board
member, I don't think we have any way of knowing."

Samar was being sarcastic with that last bit.

"I don't buy it. Sure, Navdha might be Rahul's favourite, but he
separates the personal from the professional," Aarav said firmly.

"Does he? Does he really?" Samar shook his head. "I admire the
loyalty to him, but come on, this is not out of character."

Aarav fidgeted with his ring. Navdha had always had more insight
into Rahul's thinking and doings than any of them. Occasionally, she
also knew what the Board was going to do before they did it. They
knew this because she funnelled some of that information back to the
editors. Aarav had actively avoided speculating about the things she
knew that she chose not to tell them about.

"How do you know?" he asked Samar quietly. He remembered a

warning from him back then—steer clear of any criticism of Navdha,
he'd said.

"We were talking last night, and she gushed about how nice I was
for telling the seniors that she's one of the editors who does the most
work and that she agrees with me that Titirsha has been too sloppy."

"Mhm," Aarav said vaguely, turning away from Samar.

 He muttered back a goodbye and glanced at his watch. It was
fifteen minutes to twelve and the place was almost deserted now.
Everyone who'd had classes in the morning would have headed back
to their hostel rooms now. Aarav had a lab session in the afternoon,
so he would have to figure out lunch. He considered going home—he
was in the minority of the MTU population who were local residents of
Manipal. He had his mom's car with him, but a large stretch of the
road home was under repair and he didn't feel like driving the five
kilometres in second gear.

Eating alone in Manipal elicited odd glances from everyone

around. Dining was a social activity like almost everything here was.
But it was too early for most people, so the eateries would be empty
and he wasn't likely to run into any acquaintances.

A burst of laughter floated over. Over to his left, a couple sat

talking under a short wall that ringed a tree.

The people you know, the people who know you, the people
you're seen with, the people who talk about you to other people. That
is all that counts in this town.

The revelation about Rahul leaking info to Navdha had got him
thinking about his own relationship with the Board. He'd slaved away
for two years and by now had written and edited more articles than
anyone else in the history of The Standard. Work consumed his every
waking moment. Hell, even some non-waking moments, he realised,
remembering his restless dreams about missed deadlines and the
odd sleep-texting bouts. But in the end, he was just another editor to
them. Navdha was something more, especially to Rahul. Aarav liked
them all well enough as individuals. Collectively though, they were an
exclusionary force that left him an outsider in this town. His own town.
No matter what he gave, he wouldn't be able to get over the entry
barrier.

He sighed and headed towards the front gate. To his left lay the
parking lot. He turned right, past the small cart selling vada-pav and
the kiosk with fifteen types of dosas.
 Kamath's was empty. There were two rows of large tables with
benches on either side and a row of smaller two-seaters along the far
wall. Two scruffy-looking men ate idlis near the entrance and a bunch
of students wearing the black suits of Manipal's Hotel Administration
college were seated further in.

Aarav dropped his bag onto a bench mid-way between them. In

an hour, the place would be crowded and solo diners would be
directed to the two-seaters or pushed to share a table with strangers.
This was one of those joints that lived on turnover—they expected
you to order fast, eat fast, and leave fast. The food mattered more
than the complete dining experience.

He picked up the battered plastic menu, though he already knew it

by heart. The waiter materialised at his table.

"Heli", he said in Kannada impatiently. Tell me.

"Paneer bhurji parota, lime juice," Aarav ordered.

The waiter went to the window cut into the kitchen wall and
shouted the order in. He turned around a few minutes later with
Aarav's food and looked around confusedly. It took a moment for him
to remember who had ordered it, even though there were only three
occupied tables. He went back to get a tall glass of juice after
dropping the plate unceremoniously in front of Aarav.

He ate absently, tapping through Instagram stories, then turned

his attention to the lime juice.

"Hello."

Aarav looked up at the chubby-heading-towards-fat person who

had slid onto the bench opposite. His hair was longer and more
untamed than it had been last semester, but not much else had
changed—the same plain polo tee, baggy trousers, and old-people
sandals.
 "Hey, Nikhil," he replied awkwardly.

"Listen, you know about that Youth Conference that I'm

organising? I need someone to run the media team. Handling the
press releases, interviews, blog posts, all that kind of stuff."

The Volunteer Corps, Nikhil's new home, spanned all of Manipal's

colleges. After taking over as chairman, he'd pushed for an all-India
conference that'd give a platform for social entrepreneurs to connect
with the student population.

"Me?" said Aarav doubtfully.

He'd been close to Nikhil at one time, a friendship built on a

shared passion for the work, but they hadn't talked since his ouster.

"Yeah, you. You'd do great, it's right up your alley!"

"I don't know, man, I'm already pretty swamped."

Nikhil shook his head ruefully.

"You haven't ever been involved in anything besides The

Standard."

"I like the work, what do you want me to say?" Aarav protested.

"You're putting all your energy into a void from which you're not
getting anything back. I know you, dude, and I know that
organisation. You can do better. Know what I love about the Volunteer
Corps? People here actually care about each other, and they're not
miserable all the time."

"If you were still a member, you'd be working as much as I was,"

he said.

"Probably. Look, I know leaving The Standard wasn't my choice,

but honestly, I'm glad it happened," Nikhil insisted.
 Aarav looked at him suspiciously, thinking about the application
they had found on his pen drive.

"So," he said carefully, measuring his words. "Are you telling me

that if you could somehow change things, you wouldn't want back
in?"

Nikhil smiled.

"I don't deal with ifs," he said, picking up the menu. "Think about it.
Let me know if you actually want to try and be happy for once."
 11: The Status Quo
Samar bought a samosa and walked past the library on the way
back to his hostel. He recognised a figure in front of him and cursed.
Sagarika. He had a vague idea of what had to happen with Manipal
Matters but hadn't yet figured out how to make it happen safely. He
had been so focused on Nikhil that he hadn't given this a thought
since that day at the theatre with Sahil.

"Sahil!" he said softly. The Photography Club.

He took out his phone and opened his meticulously maintained

and organised contact list. He tapped on the Student Council group
and scrolled through it, then did the same with The Photography Club
and the Prometheus Category Head groups. He walked faster,
closing the gap with Sagarika, as connections formed in his head. He
opened up the larger MTU group and quickly scrolled through the list
to confirm he had taken everyone into consideration.

Suddenly, his original idea of getting Manipal Matters kicked out

just for favour with Social Media seemed silly, childish, unimaginative.

"Sagarika."

She turned around.

"Oh, it's you," she said.

"How's everything going? With Prometheus."

"All good," she said coolly.

"No progress, huh?" he smirked.

She didn't reply.

"I thought so. You don't have much of a case," Samar continued.
 Sagarika gave him an evil look.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Samar. But it's actually none
of your business."

"Hear me out, I'm just trying to help. You don't have much of a
case, but the Photography and Videography team does. Manipal
Matters affects them more than they do SM, because their biggest
impact on the fest is from their visual coverage and not their content
creation. PAV's complaint would appear more legitimate than yours.
Sure, PAV has been backing you, but it's always been Social Media
at the forefront, and that's part of the problem."

"What does it matter whose arguments are stronger, the Council

doesn't care either way."

"Why would they? As long as you're still there doing your job, it's
just annoying background noise. They know they don't have to do
anything. You're not getting anywhere until you change that."

"I'm not sure I get what you're driving at here," Sagarika said
nervously, glancing around to check if anyone was within earshot.

Samar shrugged casually. This was a dangerous conversation to

have, but he was taking a calculated risk. His hope was that even if
Sagarika didn't go along with him, she wouldn't rat him out. At worst,
she might go to Rahul, which would be bad, but not the end of the
world. If it got out to anyone else, though, it'd be over for him, and
possibly for The Standard too.

"Disrupt the status quo," he elaborated. "Escalate, force the

Council to start negotiating. It's an open secret that Kamath doesn't
like the idea of external media bodies at our fests. The only reason he
hasn't kicked Manipal Matters out is that the issue hasn't crossed his
desk yet. The Council can't afford to let it get to Kamath, they have to
resolve it before that happens. And if they don't, you'll win anyway
when Kamath has to decide."
 Samar could see that Sagarika was trying to size him up. She
didn't trust him, but she should be able to see that their interests were
aligned here. His plan would look solid to her. It was solid, too, except
that she wouldn't see the same end to it that he could.

"It's best if it's PAV, huh?" she said.

"Uh-huh. But I think they'll need some help coming to this

realisation."
 12: A Zero-Sum Game
Riti took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes, turning away from
the computer. It had got dark while she worked. She pushed back her
chair and walked to the switchboard on the other side of the room. A
harsh white light flooded the office as she flipped the lights.

She stood there for a minute, rehearsing the conversation. She

had to call in a favour.

"Heyy, got a minute?" she said when Sachin picked up.

Sachin was the Cultural Secretary at the National Engineering

Institute near Mangalore, around fifty kilometres away. She'd been
the Council's point of contact with him for fests and competitions, and
they'd gradually developed a symbiotic relationship.

"Yeah, go ahead."

"Is there a chance I could look at the participation data and the
budget from your last few fests?" she asked him.

"Uhh, that's confidential, Riti," he replied.

"I know, I know. But it's really important. We've lost a sponsor and
the fest budget is kind of fucked. We're struggling just to stay afloat till
we can get some more money. I have a couple of ideas, but I need to
check something to know if it could work."

"Look, I'm sorry about that, and if there's anything else I can do to
help, I'd be happy to. But not this, Riti."

"Sachin, please, I'll owe you big time. I just need to look at it for
fifteen minutes. I swear nobody else will see it. And I'll delete the
entire thing after I'm done."

There was silence.

 "Sachin?"

"Fine. As long as you're going to delete everything," he said

finally.

Riti dropped back into the chair and waited, refreshing her inbox
till the e-mail popped in.

She pressed her fingertips against her temple, trying to soothe the
dull throbbing in her head. She needed a break from staring at
screens.

"Fuck it," she muttered, hitting print.

The printer whirred to life, and she was glad that there was paper
in the tray for a change. Everyone made liberal use of the office
printer—the ink was on the college.

She deleted the e-mail and pulled up their own fest's database
and printed that out too before turning off the PC.

She spread out the sheets on the conference room table. Her foot
hit a marker lying on the floor, and she picked it up, attacking the
spreadsheets.

It took her about half an hour to be sure, but it was there. She was
tearing up NEI's budget when the door swung open.

"Hey, have you seen my earphones anywhere around here?"

Rahul asked.

Riti waved an arm at the table cluttered with print-outs, brochures,

and stationary. Rahul started poking around at the mess.

"Oh, did you talk to your people?" Riti asked.

Rahul straightened up.

 "Yeah, we're good to go on the newsletters. We'll give up half a
page for sponsor logos. But the liveblog, it's not right for us. It'd go
directly on the website, and we don't like the idea of commercialising
there."

Riti placed the scraps of paper in front of her.

"What if it wasn't just on your website?"

Rahul blinked at her.

"If you put those logos on your liveblog too," she explained, "then
it would give us a very good reason to help it become more visible.
Say, by integrating it with our app."

Rahul pulled out a chair and sat down.

"That would change things," he said.

Riti knew it would.

The Standard would never share their numbers with anyone, but
she was sure they didn't have a large readership to show for all the
effort they put into the liveblog. People didn't care enough to stop
their social media scrolling to follow links to the website and keep up
with fest commentary.

The previous Board had tried to get Prometheus' AppDev team to

put the liveblog into the official mobile application. That would have
been a game-changer. All registrations and announcements for the
fest happened on the app, so there was a huge userbase and hence
a large audience. The Council had shot down the request, though.
Relationships had been rockier back then, and The Standard was
seen as more of an outsider.

Riti hadn't run this by the others but knew she'd be okay. Agni had
no reason to veto her. He hadn't been a part of the previous Council,
so he wouldn't be aware of the precedent that this broke.
 "I suppose we could put up the logos as the first and last liveblog
update on each day, sort of as a 'Prometheus, brought to you by …'
kind of thing," Rahul reasoned.

"Talk to your team," she told him. "Once they're on board, I'll
arrange for your tech team to sit down with the developers."

Rahul nodded.

"Also, Rahul?"

"Yeah?"

"This is getting a little annoying, you not being able to make

decisions. Things will be moving faster the closer we get to the fest,
we'll need to deal with someone with authority."

"I hear you. Don't worry, we'll have the new EIC and ME in a week
or so," he assured her.

"Ooh, who is it going to be?"

"I don't know, it'll be the editors' decision," he told her.

Riti rolled her eyes.

"Come on, you must know who they're going to pick."

"I might have an idea," Rahul smiled. "But it wouldn't be fair for me
to say before they've voted on it. Ah, here it is."

He reached forward, lifting up an old Prometheus poster and

extracting a tangled pair of earphones from under it.

"See you around," Riti said as he got up to leave.

She collected the torn pieces of NIE's fest data and deposited it in
the overflowing dustbin outside.
 She'd forgotten about her headache for a minute, but the
pounding in her head was back now. She walked back into the
conference room, and laid down on the sofa. The cold stream of air
from the AC felt good on her face. She closed her eyes.

Agni was seated with his feet up on the table when she got up and
looked around groggily. Her watch told her it was eight pm. She'd
been out for two hours.

"Hello," Agni said, noticing the movement.

She noticed Eeshan farther down the table and remembered what
she'd been working on.

"I have something," she announced, shifting to a seat midway

between the Convenor and the Treasurer. "Is Dhruv around?"

"I saw him around the library, should I give him a call?" Eeshan
asked.

She nodded and waited. They didn't have a meeting scheduled,

but they generally hung around in the office catching up on college
work if they didn't have any fest issues. The library was right outside,
and Dhruv soon joined them in the office.

Dhruv, Eeshan, and Agni together had complete authority over

fest decisions at the moment.

"So, there is a way that we can boost participation without extra

spending," Riti said. "Participation in some events is more elastic than
others. If you look at quizzing and robotics, for example, every major
engineering college in the country has multiple teams. But no single
fest can attract all of them. College administrations generally restrict
how many events students can go to, so they have to be picky. What
this means is that for these events that have large nationwide
societies, we're currently only tapping into a small percentage of the
potential market. If you increase the budgets of these events so they
can advertise more prize money—"
 "Let me stop you right there," Agni interrupted. "We can't increase
any event's budget, you know this."

"We can't increase the budget as a whole," Riti corrected. "We

can increase some events' budget."

"And take out money from where?" Eeshan questioned her.

"From the other events. No, hear me out. The prize money does
not matter for these, the same people will show up no matter how
much is on offer. They mainly have casual participants joining for fun.
But if you take some of that money and give it to these other events
that have a more elastic lure, you're going to get more people."

"It's possible, I suppose, but you're just theorising, " Eeshan said
doubtfully.

"No, I'm not," Riti declared triumphantly. "I managed to get a look
at National Engineering Institute's numbers. They got an overall
budget increase last year, which they passed on to all their events
equally. And guess what, most of those didn't get more participants
compared to the year before. Only the ones with large networks and
societies did."

Eeshan looked unconvinced.

"Is it worth the trouble? I mean, I'm not sure how significant the
extra revenue will be."

Riti fished around the table and pulled out a list of their events.

"I've highlighted the ones that can bring in more people, you'll see
that's around a dozen out of the eighty-odd total. If you cut all the
other budgets by twenty per cent, you can finance around an eighty
per cent increase for our chosen few. If NEI's numbers are anything
to go by, that should draw in around three hundred more people,
adding up to a lakh and a half in participation fees."
 "Are those numbers right?" Agni asked Eeshan, who had whipped
out the calculator he always carried.

It was a worn-out Casio FX-991MS, at least five years old. These

calculators ran for decades without even needing to be charged
courtesy the solar panel built in. They were often passed down from
batch to batch, a remnant from the ages when things were built to
last. The treasurer pushed his unit to the limit though, and Riti
wondered if he'd be the first person to run one into the ground.

"The numbers are right, it works out," Eeshan conceded, after

punching in some numbers.

"One and a half lakh rupees," Agni mused.

Dhruv was shaking his head.

"You're going to piss off a shitload of people," he said grimly. "All

those Category Heads will be up in arms."

Riti looked at him. She knew he was right but also that he was too
cautious and that this had to be done. There was no other solution
that was presenting itself. He must know this too, but was still obliged
to register his protest.

She turned to Agni, who was on the brink.

"It's a significant sum of money," she said. "And think about it, the
message we're sending out isn't a bad one either—if you want more
money, you need to attract more participants. They'll cry a little, sure,
but you can deal with them."

It was the right thing to do, playing to Agni's pride in his

ruthlessness. Riti knew he'd relish the opportunity to show his
strength through this.

"Let's do it," he said.

 13: The Bare Minimum
Aarav peered through the little glass window set in the wooden
door before entering. Samar was sitting on the last bench, scrolling
through his phone, his loud blue sports shoes resting on the edge of
the chair. It was ten minutes into the half-hour break between the
second and third lectures, and the class was almost empty.

Aarav walked over to the back.

"Titirsha just texted me," he said. "She wants me to run for the
Executive Board with her, as her Managing Editor."

"That's nice, what did you tell your future EIC?" Samar said with a
smile.

"I'm still trying to figure out the best way to say no. But my point
was, she's already started her campaign. We need to get a move on
too, there's less than a week to round up the votes."

"We have it in the bag, nobody considers her a serious

candidate," Samar said unconcernedly.

"Yeah, but still, let's not get too cocky. We should talk to everyone
and get explicit confirmation that they're behind us," Aarav said.

"Yeah, you're right," he said. "Go for it."

He sounded surprised that it was Aarav who had brought it up.

This was something Samar should have been on top of.

"Nobody other than Titirsha we want to keep out of the Board,

right?" Aarav asked.

The editors would talk about the positions they wanted when he
went to them, and he'd have to pledge his support.
 "No, they're fine," Samar said. "We have it easy, with no
contention for the posts. Titirsha could have picked up some votes if
that wasn't the case. Right now, everyone else knows they're getting
the Board position they want, so she has nothing to offer them to win
support. I hope Titirsha doesn't go the Nikhil route, though."

"Oh, that reminds me, I ran into Nikhil the other day. He seems
pretty committed to his Volunteer Corps and that Youth Conference
they're organising. It really doesn't seem he wants to come back
here."

"Of course he doesn't want the job, Aarav. But at best, he's going
to apply just to fuck with us. At worst, he'll try to get it just to wreck the
organisation," said Samar with a flash of anger, which was
immediately replaced with a glint of excitement.

"This conference you mentioned," Samar said softly, leaning in,

"it's a pretty big deal, isn't it?"

Aarav narrowed his eyes.

"Why?" he said suspiciously, but Samar already knew it was.

"Oh, don't worry about it," Samar said gleefully.

Aarav opened his mouth but then closed it again.

He didn't want to know. He tried to ignore the uneasy feeling that

the conversation had left him with as he sat through his last two
lectures and tread the usual path back to The Standard's office. He'd
expected it to be empty but found Varsha on the mattress, staring at
the ceiling with her shoes kicked off.

She craned her neck back at the sound of the door.

"Hello," she said, looking at him upside down.

"What brings you here?" he asked.

 "My last class was cancelled, so I needed to hang around
somewhere till lunch," she explained.

"Speaking of," she swung her legs down, slipping into her flip-
flops, "I don't have anyone to eat with. What are you doing now?"

"We can eat, I don't have plans," he replied. "Where do you want
to go?"

"If you have your car, I wouldn't mind Basil."

"Basil's good."

They walked to the parking lot and got in his car. It was a short
drive to Basil Cafe, and they pulled up in front of the green two-storey
building. A bespectacled man with an easy smile ushered them to a
table on the top floor. Aarav recognised him as the owner of the place
who was somehow Facebook friends with half the people at MTU.

Aarav flipped through the menu, though he already knew his

order.

"What are you getting?" Varsha asked, turning the pages with
considerably more focus.

"The Alfredo pasta," he said.

She looked up.

"Isn't that what you got the last time you were here?"

"Yeah," he said sheepishly. "I find one thing I like in a restaurant

and have that all the time till I get sick of it."

"You really live on the wild side, huh, Aarav?"

"Hey, if it's good enough to eat once, it's good enough to eat a
hundred times."
 "Do you want to split a starter?" she asked, running her finger
down the list. "Let's see, you're vegetarian, aren't you? What about
the Gobi Manchurian?"

"Sounds good," Aarav replied, flipping the book shut. "Ready to

order?"

Varsha nodded and caught the eye of the owner, who materialised
back at their table.

"I'll have a veg Alfredo pasta, a Gobi Manchurian, and…"

"Butter garlic rice with chicken, please," Varsha finished.

The proprietor made a slight face.

"I would advise against the Alfredo," he told Aarav. "It's on the
bland side, won't go well with the Manchurian. I would recommend
the Tuscany pasta instead."

"Uhh," Aarav said, opening the menu again to buy some time. His
indecisiveness was exactly why he stuck to the same order every
time.

"Eat something else for a change," Varsha encouraged him.

He gave in.

"Fine, make it Tuscany," he said.

"Titirsha texted me," Varsha told him after they'd placed their
orders.

"Let me guess, she thinks she should be the Editor-in-Chief,"

Aarav said.

"Yup. And she wanted to know what post I was going for."

"Tell me, Varsha, are you going for anything?"

 She sighed.

"Fine, I'll take up PR for you guys," she said unenthusiastically.

"That's good. I'm pretty sure you're going to get it. And since we're
on the topic of Board positions—"

Varsha waved a hand dismissively.

"Yeah, yeah, you're gunning for Managing Editor, Samar's for

Editor-in-Chief. I've got your back, don't worry."

"What's the point, though?" she asked after a while.

"Huh? Point of what?"

"Of all this, all the hours we're pouring into these clubs and
student projects and media bodies and whatever."

Aarav toyed with the car keys on the table.

"I don't know," he said. "It doesn't make any sense, you're right.
Sometimes I don't get this town. You'd think that people would just try
to get by doing the bare minimum. We just need a decent job at the
end of all this. And yet, that seems to be our last priority. I don't know
why people do any of this."

"Why do you?"

"Sometimes, I think that it's because I love the work. I wanted to

go into journalism, but I was too scared. That industry is in a sorry
state, and engineering seemed safer. The Standard is a little bit of
journalism, and I feel like our work actually matters. But then, other
times, I worry I'm just fooling myself into believing that. That I'm just
doing it because I don't know what else I would do with myself if not
this."
 A waiter appeared and unloaded their food off his tray onto the
table.

"Nice, the Tuscany pasta has bread!" Aarav said, stabbing at a

crouton.

"Now you're going to order it every time you come here, aren't
you?" Varsha said.

"If it's good enough to eat once…"

 14: The Cost Of Conditioner
Samar looked at the poster again.

The Volunteer Corps' Youth Conference. It was at the beginning of

October, right before when the Student Activities Director usually
interviewed The Standard's Executive Board applicants. The timing
was perfect for Nikhil. It was a big event. There were popular social
entrepreneurs involved and a nationwide student audience attending.
Nikhil would walk into the interview with a nice certificate and a Letter
of Recommendation from the Corps' esteemed Faculty Head.
Anything less and he would have no chance—Samar and Aarav had
enough experience, goodwill with their own Faculty Head, and the
backing of the old Board. But Nikhil had just taken on his position in
the Corps, with this conference being his first major gig and the only
one that would matter as far as the interview went.

Nikhil didn't inspire much loyalty, so there would be cracks within

the Youth Conference team. Where there was dissatisfaction, there
was opportunity. But he needed some intelligence from the inside. He
checked the time.

"You're late," he commented when she finally showed up.

"Fuck you, Father Time," Shaleen said crossly.

She stuck her hands in her tight jeans. A gust of wind ruffled her
short-cropped hair. She'd told him that she kept it that length because
conditioner was too expensive.

"I need to get into someone's online accounts," he told her.

"What the fuck do I look like to you?" Shaleen laughed. "I'm just
smart, I'm not a hacker."

"No, see, I have it figured out. I checked his timetable, he's in the
IT branch, and one of his lab classes is in the same room as ours. We
just need to get a keylogger onto his machine. I could probably do it
myself, but I didn't want to risk messing it up so…."

Unlike most Computer Science people in MTU, who'd picked the

branch mainly because it had the best employment opportunities,
Shaleen belonged there. She was what he needed not just because
she was great at tech, but she was also a cold heartless person with
no empathy who wouldn't have moral qualms about this.

"Are you sure he'll be logging in to whatever you're trying to

access during the lab?"

"This guy's a workaholic and doesn't really care much about his
academics, so I think it's a safe bet," Samar reasoned.

"Who is he, anyway?"

"Do you really care about that?"

"You're right, never mind. But what's in it for me?"

"I'll owe you," Samar tried.

Shaleen laughed.

"That doesn't do anything for me, I don't see myself needing any
favours from you."

"Well, what do you want?"

She thought about this for a minute.

"You guys have that Focusrite podcast system, don't you?"

"I think it's somewhere in the office," Samar said uneasily.

"Okay, I'll help you out with whatever you're planning if you let me
have that," she said.
 "What do you want that for?"

"For TechTalk. We have some videos and podcasts planned, and

we don't have great audio equipment."

TechTalk was a new computer and tech discussion blog. One of

the main attractions there was that it was backed by a large
international tech review channel, so members got their hands on lots
of new products to review.

Samar considered her demand.

The hardware had been acquired two or three years ago, when
there had been plans to move into non-text mediums, but that had
never taken off. It now lay on the bottom shelf of a cupboard, buried
under old fest newsletters.

"The college has a paper trail tracking it, they check on the stuff
they've bought for us from time to time. But, that's probably not
happening for a while, so I can slip it to you for a couple of months. It
has to come back, though," Samar said.

The purchase had been approved and funded by the Student

Activities department, but Samar doubted if anyone remembered
about it right now. Nobody would notice it missing for a long while.
The main reason he needed it back soon was that he had plans that
would put the equipment to good use by the end of his term.

Shaleen thought it over.

"Fine," she agreed.

"Our lab is tomorrow. Can you get everything ready by then?"

"Hmm, I'm not sure, Samar. Downloading a small computer

program in under twenty-four hours, sounds like a tough task," she
said sarcastically.
 "How did it go with our Department Head?" Samar asked,
changing the topic as they walked to class.

She gave her characteristic eye-roll. Nobody did disdain quite so

well as Shaleen.

"She just had to sign the letter, but no, she wants to do her due
diligence. She asks me what it's for, and when I tell her, she gets this
look of self-righteous pity. 'They're very selective at IISc, are you sure
you're up for it?'. I wanted to tell her to shut the fuck up, but then she
noticed my CGPA and just scrawled her signature without another
word," she ranted.

Shaleen was trying for an AI internship at the Indian Institute of

Science and had needed a letter certifying that she was a Computer
Science student.

"Knowing that you might be responsible for the next big artificial
intelligence advances does nothing to ease my mind when it comes
to fear of evil robot overlords," he said.

"Aye, you watch your back. My cyber-daddies are really going to

crack the whip with you," she replied with a grin.

"You worry about your own daddy, all that money you're going to
owe him by the time you get your fancy foreign master's degree."

"Oh, he loves giving me money. He's basically my sugar daddy,

except all I have to do is call him once a month and wish him on
birthdays," Shaleen said.

Samar wondered if she was only joking.

They entered their classroom and made their way to the back.

"Is there a chance of an assignment today?" Shaleen asked.

"Yeah, I think so," he told her, rummaging in his bag to check that
he had his notebook. "You're going to help me out, right? I only have
notes for half the syllabus."

"I'll consider it," she said.

"Come on, I'd help you out."

"The day I need your help on an assignment is the day I kill

myself," she responded.

"Hey!"

"Okay, don't cry, Jesus. I'll help," she cut him off.

"I think you actually might be a good person, deep deep down,"
Samar commented.

"Don't make me regret sitting next to you," Shaleen warned him.

The door swung open and the professor waddled in with just a
laptop in her hand. A happy buzz filled the room. If there was an
assignment, she'd have a bundle of answer sheets with her.

"She's been pregnant forever," Shaleen noted. "When is that baby

coming out?"

"What if...she's not actually pregnant? She could be faking that

bump, like Vidya Balan in Kahaani. And halfway through the class
one day, she's going to pull out a sheaf of paper from in there and
conduct the assignment," Samar said in a whisper.

Shaleen laughed, and the professor glared in their direction. She

finished connecting her laptop to the projector and pulled up her
PowerPoint presentation.

Samar yawned and looked around for something to entertain him.

A glint of sunlight from the window behind them flashed off Shaleen's
wristwatch. He reached across and took her wrist, adjusting it to
move the reflection onto the blackboard.
 Shaleen played along, moving her hand so the little circle of light
danced across the wall.

"Okay, no, stop," he said.

"Why?" she asked and stopped the movement, the reflection

resting on the professor's face.

"Shaleen, stop," he hissed.

"What, I'm not doing anything!"

And then it was too late. The professor was one of the timid types
who shirked in the face of adversity. She hurriedly snapped her laptop
shut and unplugged it, choosing to flee.

"I will skip this chapter, all of you can just study from the textbook,"
she said weakly before rushing out.

"You were shining it right in her face, are you blind?" Samar
demanded.

"Bitch, I'm not wearing my specs, I'm near-sighted!" Shaleen

snapped.

"So that's a yes, then" Samar shot back.

A few first-benchers had turned back and were glaring at them.

"What, it's not like we weren't just going to study on our own
anyway," she told them defiantly.
 15: Broken Back-Ups
"Can you drop me home?" Varsha asked as they walked out of
Basil.

"Sure, it's on the way back anyway," Aarav said.

"Are you heading back to college?"

"Yeah, just have a little bit of editing to do, thought I'd work in the
office," he said, getting behind the wheel.

He was sliding his phone into the space under the music player
when he noticed the red icon at the top.

"Ah shit, I'm low on battery," he cursed. He'd left his charger at
home. "You don't happen to have a Type C phone too, do you?"

"I don't know what mine uses, here, check," she said, handing
over her phone.

He glanced at the socket.

"Yeah, this is Type C. Is it cool if I charged up at your place for a

while?" he asked her.

Varsha had moved out of the hostels the previous semester.

Aarav drove through the gates of the society and parked outside
her block. They went up the lift and into the two-bedroom apartment.

Varsha kicked off her slippers and disappeared inside as Aarav

was untying his sneakers. She returned with her charger and handed
it to him when he was done.

"Oh, you're still in the slow charging era," he said, disappointed,

walking to the outlet in the hall.
 "Now, see, that's a charger!" he said, pointing at a huge power
adapter with a bright red cable plugged into the socket in the corner.

"That's my roommate's. What is it with you OnePlus fanboys

looking down on everyone else?" Varsha scowled.

"What's not to love about fast charging? I can just plug it in for
fifteen minutes and get going."

"If it means you get your condescending ass out of here faster, I'm
good with that," Varsha replied.

Aarav plugged his phone in and set it down on the sofa. He

walked over to the outer wall of Varsha's bedroom. Fairy lights were
strung up on it, marking off a large rectangular area within which
Varsha had stuck up some photographs.

"I love Polaroids," she said, standing behind him. "I try to get
photos of all my best days here, all my favourite people."

Aarav looked at the photos, at all the smiling people in varying

states of inebriation frozen in time at those moments of happiness.

"Hey, do you want to see my scrapbook?"

He sensed that there was only one right answer to that question.

"Sure," he said, turning back to the wall, feeling that familiar dull
hollowness expand in him again.

He hadn't quite figured it out yet, but he did recognise that its
onset was usually when he was confronted with a display of the kinds
of happiness that he'd always been a stranger to.

"Here," said Varsha, pressing a large, colourful book into his hand
and pulling him back to the hall.

Aarav sank onto the couch and flipped the book open. He
registered a splotch of watercolours and figures and listened to
Varsha talk about how she used to paint in high school. Her phone
rang, and she went back inside to get it.

He turned the page and was greeted by more photos. More

friends. More life. So much life. How did someone just...live?

He placed the book next to him and got up. To his left, the curtains
billowed out. He pulled them open and found the balcony door open.
He stepped out and put his hands on the railing. The metal was cold
against his palms. Manipal stretched out in front of him, greenery still
surviving in patches between the high-rises that were springing up.
Some Bollywood music floated up from one of the other open
balconies. He could see the top of his parked car a long way beneath
him.

He remembered a post he'd seen on Instagram, about someone

wanting to experience falling. Not the fatal impact, but just a long
weightless eternity in the air. It was probably from Tumblr. The best
posts on Instagram usually were just screenshots of Tumblr.

Aarav heard Varsha come to the balcony and turned around.

"I was going to show you my family photos," she said, and it took
him a moment to realise that the reproach in her voice was because
he'd abandoned her book.

"Yeah, sorry, I was just…let's go, show me," he said, going back to
the hall. But she could notice the emptiness in those words, the lack
of enthusiasm.

"It's fine, you don't have to act like you're interested," she said,
slamming the glass door shut behind her as she followed him.

Aarav didn't bother to argue, but that seemed to set her off more.
She grabbed the scrapbook with misdirected anger.

"I need to go," Aarav said awkwardly, picking up his phone,

thankful again for fast-charging.
 He drove back to college and walked to the office in silence. He
sat there for a while, staring at the computer, trying to muster up the
motivation to edit an article.

His phone rang. A welcome distraction. It was Varun, the writer.

"Aarav, someone from Manipal Matters called me," he said, his

voice jittery. "They alleged that my report of the Aaina play was
plagiarised from theirs. Something about the same wordings in both. I
didn't copy anything, I haven't even read whatever they've published."

"Okay, Varun, calm down. What did you tell them?"

"Nothing yet, just that my seniors would get back to them," the
second-year said.

"Okay, that's good. Listen, we're going to sort this out, alright?
Here's what I want you to do. Once I hang up, send me the number of
the guy who called you. Then, keep your report open in front of you,
and wait for me to call back. If anyone else tries to contact you, do
not pick up the phone, do not reply to their messages. Okay?"

"Okay, understood," he said.

"Good kid. I'm going to hang up now."

He opened WhatsApp and looked at the contact Varun had sent

him, trying to decide who should talk to Manipal Matters. He was
entitled to do it himself, but it wasn't the sort of thing he enjoyed. It
was a little bit of a PR issue, but Varsha had never been in writing
department discussions and he wasn't sure if something this serious
should be her first taste. He decided on Samar and placed the call.

Aarav read Varun's report while he waited for Samar to talk to

Manipal Matters. It was a fairly straightforward account of last week's
street play by Aaina, one of the college's drama clubs.

His phone buzzed, and he quickly read through Samar's texts

detailing what Manipal Matters had told him.
 Their case did look legitimate. It rested on a few phrases and
words that were suspiciously the same in both articles. The mention
of a cameo by the Campus Patrol. The quote from the MTU Director,
where he had exclaimed that the event was a wonderfully executed
one. The play being a juxtaposition of humour.

The last one seemed damning. Aarav didn't think that the word
was used commonly enough for it to be a coincidence. Manipal
Matters' article had gone up well over a day before theirs.

He headed over to Aaina's Facebook page and found the play's

poster on their wall. Something struck him. He re-read the
accompanying caption and smiled before hitting redial on his phone.

"Samar, listen. Do you think you could get me the play's script
from someone in Aaina? And also any other material, like the
emcee's notes and stuff like that."

"I don't know anyone in Aaina well enough to ask for that," Samar
said doubtfully.

"Call up Varsha," Aarav suggested. "She gets us free passes from

them, she must have a contact."

Aarav opened a text file on the computer, typed all the allegedly
plagiarised parts out in a neat list, and waited. Varsha didn't
disappoint, and Aaina's material was in his inbox within the hour. He
went through the documents and leant back in satisfaction.

He placed a call to Varun to confirm his theory before contacting

Samar.

"I think we're good," he said. "There are perfectly valid

explanations for all the similarities. Most are phrases that the actors
used, that's where both the writers picked it up from. One part is from
Aaina's Facebook posts. That leaves the fact that we quoted the
Director as having exclaimed, but well, you know the dude, he's an
excitable man, what other word do we use to describe his speech."
 Samar chuckled.

"Nicely done. I'm assuming you've typed all of this out? Send it
over, I'll talk to Manipal Matters, they have to drop it now," he said.

Aarav placed his phone on the table, feeling a little disappointed.

A small part of him had been hoping for a tougher, more drawn-out
battle, but it seemed to be heading to a tame end.

He idly browsed The Standard's WordPress site and stumbled

across the food delivery article they'd published a month ago. It was,
according to him, the greatest piece of journalism in The Standard's
history, and an example of the kind of content he would be pushing
for in his term as Managing Editor. The article was about the entry of
Swiggy and Zomato into Manipal. The growing student population
had been attracting more and more businesses, both big national
chains and smaller homegrown enterprises, to the small town.

It hadn't been easy. While they did have some of the college's
best writers, the organisation was content with publishing mundane
reports of the activities of college clubs. Writers wasted themselves,
pushing out stuff that nobody read, and the organisation had too
much inertia. But he had managed to pull two writers off their regular
duties and set them to the task of interviewing as many restaurant
owners and food delivery partners as would talk to them. It had taken
over four months, with the summer vacation in the middle throwing a
spanner into the works, but they'd pulled it off—a comprehensive
report of the industry with detailed accounts of what it meant for all
the stakeholders involved.

He clicked on the statistics section and drew a sharp breath.

Vindication.

He typed out a text to Rahul.

"The food delivery piece is among the top ten most-viewed articles
on our site!"
 There was a twinge of shame after he'd hit Send, at the fact that
he still sought his seniors' validation.

He switched to Instagram to try and drown away the thought and

started tapping away at the stories. Rahul had posted a few. One was
him on the backseat of a rented scooter, with a few others tagged in
it. Aarav remembered that Rahul had had plans to go to the beach.
Rahul, a couple of his friends, a couple of the Board members, and
Navdha.

Aarav went back to WhatsApp and deleted his last text, then
tossed his phone onto the mattress behind him.

He turned his attention back to the screen, navigating to his writer

profile on the site. Thirty articles. Afridi, their to-be Arts & Culture
Head, had the next highest number, followed by Namit, the legendary
Writing Head from Aarav's first year.

Raju, their to-be Tech Head, had once suggested purging some of
the oldest content from the site to save up space.

"We're running a little low on storage, we'll have to upgrade to a

more expensive plan soon," he'd warned.

Aarav would beg the Student Activities department for money if he

had to, but he wouldn't allow any articles to be deleted.

This, he realised, looking at the long list on the screen, was the
strongest testimony to his existence. It wasn't likely that anyone
would read any of this once he was gone, but it'd still be there.

Unless someone after him decided it was easier to just clear out
some cloud storage to make space for newer content, or the hosting
platform itself went down.

He opened up an article and clicked on the Save option. The

HTML page started downloading, then stopped. It was a problem with
the college network. Someone somewhere had decided to try and
block some social media and entertainment sites but had messed it
up. Most websites were still accessible, but file downloads would
sometimes fail.

Aarav had wanted to take a back-up of his articles. He cursed and

kicked at one of the old CRT monitors piled up beneath the desk. The
room had once been a dumping ground for random junk—
decommissioned computer parts, a broken typewriter, some drums
and trumpets.

The part of the campus that he could see from the window was
deserted. He turned back to his phone. Rahul's Instagram story was
still open.

He kicked at the monitor again.

 16: Dealing With Death
Samar turned into the corridor that led to The Standard's office,
his footsteps echoing off the marble floor. He walked into the office
and took in the scene silently.

"What did that monitor ever do to you?" he quipped.

One of the old CRT monitors lay in the middle of the office, the
glass shattered and scattered on the floor. The plastic body was bent
out of shape. A few feet away from it, also on the floor, was Aarav. He
had his knees up against his chest and was staring blankly at the
wall.

Aarav looked up with a start when Samar spoke, his eyes meeting
for a brief instant. Samar was surprised to see how red his eyes
were. He wondered what he'd walked in on.

"What's going on?" he asked, but Aarav just shook his head.

Samar pinched the bridge of his nose. He walked over to the door
and latched it shut.

"Okay, I don't need to know the specifics, but whatever you're

having a breakdown over, have you considered having it anywhere
else?"

"Fuck you, Samar," Aarav hissed.

"Fuck me? Fuck me? Look at where you are, Aarav. What if one
of the kids had walked in, huh? You think it'd be inspiring, seeing their
future Managing Editor crying in the office? What if it had been some
other editor, not exactly a sight that'd inspire confidence in their
leader, is it? Would you still have their vote after this? So fuck me?
No, fuck you."

"Is that all you fucking care about? Really?" Aarav said, offended.
 "Honestly? Yeah. I can't do anything about whatever the fuck else
is up with you, but you'd probably only be worse off if you fucked up
your standing in the organisation."

They were silent for a while. Samar slipped his backpack off his
shoulder and unzipped it.

"Here," he said, pulling out a small bottle of whiskey.

"Your hand alright?" he asked, noticing the gash across the

knuckles as Aarav reached for the bottle.

"It's fine, just cut it on the glass," Aarav mumbled, and took a large
gulp.

He grimaced as he swallowed, handing back the bottle.

"Do you know the story of Orpheus?" Samar asked him.

"The Matrix guy?"

"No, that's Morpheus. Something to do with sleep. Orpheus was a

Greek poet, exceptionally talented fellow. The story goes that his wife
died from a snake bite. But remember, this is Ancient Greece, death
does not have to be permanent. So, Orpheus makes his way down to
hell and sways Hades with his music. The sweet old God of the
Underworld agrees to let him have his wife back, but not in a very
straightforward arrangement. Orpheus is told to walk out of Hades'
realm and that his wife would follow him out. But, and this is an
important but, Orpheus was not allowed to look back at her until they
were both out of there. If he did, everything would be null and void,
he'd lose his wife.

Our poet agrees, but the moment he steps foot back in the land of
the living, he forgets that his wife needs to be out too, and turns
around. That, of course," Samar snapped his finger, "does it for them.
He's lost her again and this time, forever.
 So what I'm saying is, Aarav, don't turn around, don't think about
being happy, don't ever slow down enough to start thinking about
your life."

Samar unlatched the door.

"There's blood on the floor. Pull yourself together, find the cleaning
staff, and get the office back in order," he said, walking out.
 17: Striking A Bargain
Samar stepped into the cold air-conditioned room. He walked past
the long rows of computers and checked that the small office at the
end of the room was empty.

"We're good," he said to Shaleen, who was still near the door.

"You know where your guy sits?" she asked.

He walked back to the row nearest to the door.

"Let's see, his roll number is nine, so," he walked down the line of
computers, counting, "this should be it."

He powered it on and stepped back, letting Shaleen take over.

It was password-protected, but they all used the same account for
their labs, so she knew the login credentials. The Ubuntu desktop
flashed on the screen.

"Yeah, we've got the right machine," Shaleen confirmed, pointing

at the folder conveniently named with his roll number and section.

She plugged in a USB drive and pulled up the command line.

"Okay, it's set up," she said after a couple of minutes.

"That's it?" he asked.

"There's not much to it, just had to install it and configure where
the data needs to be sent."

She reached into her bag and pulled out a book and a pen.

"Here, this is the e-mail to which it will send the logs, use this
password to log in," she instructed, tearing off a piece of paper and
writing down the details. "Delete the account when you're done."
 He nodded.

"Thanks," he said.

"That's not how you thank me," she reminded him.

"I'll hold up my end, relax," he said, taking out his phone.

He had a text message from Sagarika. It was a screenshot of a

WhatsApp group chat. PAV+SC Prometheus 2018. There was a
message from Sahil about how they were frustrated with the Council
pandering to Manipal Matters at the expense of the fest's own
categories. Then, a long series of notifications showing people
leaving the group.

The Prometheus Photography and Videography department had

gone on strike.

There were still fifteen minutes before his lab started. Navdha had
a lab too, so she might be in the building already.

The foyer in AB 5 looked out over the lawn in the middle of the
building. Standing desks were laid out in the area, with a food counter
off to one side.

"Coffee," Samar said, fishing out a ten-rupee note.

He took his cup over to a desk in the centre and waited for
Navdha.

"I need you to do something for me," he said when she walked up
to him. "The Student Council has a little crisis that they're dealing
with, and Rahul is going to give them a solution to their problem. But
he doesn't know about this solution yet, so you will tell him about it."

"Why can't you do it?"

 "Rahul's position in the Council is unique, it is best it comes from
him," Samar replied.

"I meant, why don't you talk to Rahul yourself?"

"I thought it was obvious. It's not entirely uncontroversial, the

solution, so he might need a little convincing. And you're the most
suitable candidate to achieve that because he already wants to agree
with everything you say," he said with a quiet smile.

"What would I need to tell him?"

"No, you tell me you're definitely in first," he said.

"It sounds like nobody is supposed to know that we talked about

this," she said.

"They're not," he agreed.

"Not even Aarav?"

Samar shook his head.

"No, he will have to get involved later, and he'll function best if he
doesn't know," he told her. "So, are you in?"

"I want some organisational changes in return," she said. "Another

level in the hierarchy. All non-executive Board members other than
Art, Tech, and PR Heads answer to me, and all writers and editors
report directly to me."

Samar considered this. The Writing Head already had extensive

oversight over all published content and, therefore, some control over
the other writing Board members, but it was still a flat hierarchy that
could lead to power struggles.

"Okay, but you leave all matters of reporting to Aarav," he said.

 Aarav's main agenda was to get the organisation to do more
journalism and he'd need a free reign to achieve that. He would want
it too—for all his integrity, Aarav still craved power and control, just
like Navdha. He was just more principled in how he went about
getting it.

"Done," Navdha said. "Now, tell me."

He leaned forward and told her.

She raised an eyebrow.

"Really?"

"Really," Samar smiled.

He tossed his empty coffee cup into the bin and returned to his
lab. He checked the clock. He was right on time.
 18: Tables For Two
Varsha threw back the last of the gin and looked around for the
waiter. She was fairly buzzed already and seemed to have all
intentions of getting drunk. Aarav wasn't too concerned, though it was
only afternoon and they had their Board election that evening. It was
Manipal, after all, and she could handle her alcohol. He felt a nervous
twinge when he thought about the election, but he told himself he
didn't have to worry, that he already knew how it would go.

"I'm good, thanks," Aarav told the waiter when he turned to him
after taking down Varsha's order of Blue Riband. He wiped the
condensation off the outside of his glass of coke.

He'd been in the restaurant for an hour now, silently shovelling

down a bowl of Mac and Cheese, letting Varsha talk enough for the
both of them. She had ranted for a while about something she was
visibly upset over, somehow without actually going into detail about it.
Something about plans her friends had and someone she didn't get
along with being part of it. He would have paid attention on another
day, but his mind kept wandering back to the election. Plus, the Mac
and Cheese demanded concentration too. It could go from hot
enough to burn his mouth down to too cold to eat very fast, and he
had to time each mouthful carefully. There wasn't much that he could
contribute to this conversation anyway. It was such a human social
problem that Aarav had no experience he could draw from to say
something meaningful.

The waiter returned with more gin, and Varsha began pouring it
into her glass. He'd been surprised when she asked him if he wanted
to get a drink. They hadn't really talked since that day he'd gone to
her place after Basil. It was how they usually handled friction, though
—they just steered clear of each other for a while and then pretended
nothing had happened.

He noticed that she had started talking about The Standard.

 "Something about Samar just gives me the creeps," she said, in a
conspiratorial whisper. "It sends shivers down my spine to know he's
going to be our EIC from today."

"Come on, he's not that bad. He's just a little ruthless in his
methods. Sometimes someone needs to be an asshole to get things
done. Besides, I thought you were okay with him, you said we had
your vote."

"I'm backing him because you're backing him, and I suspect that's
the case with the rest of the editors too. And I'm not so sure about
how much he can get done, either. Nobody seems to trust him, and
they don't really want anything to do with him."

Aarav frowned. It was Varsha who would have to deal with other
student clubs for the most part, but as EIC, Samar would still be in
the picture. If Varsha was right, then this could be a problem.

He filed the thought away for later, seeing a once-familiar face

framed against the bright sunlight outside as the door opened. Aarav
waved to get his attention.

"It's been too long, man," Parth said, grasping his arm.

He hadn't seen his old schoolmate for months and had only met
him a couple of times since they'd started college. He would have
thought that things to talk about would have piled up over time, but
found himself unsure of what to say. Parth had been the closest thing
to a best friend Aarav had ever had, but they'd drifted apart after
school. In fact, Aarav had drifted apart from everyone. He didn't
remember why he'd cut himself off, but one day, he'd suddenly
realised that he'd pushed himself out of his old circle with no way to
get back in.

Varsha had a look of mild curiosity on her face. Usually, it was

people she knew that they ran into when they were out somewhere.

"This is Parth, we went to school together," he said, introducing

them. "Parth is in MMC's Editorial Board," he added, figuring he'd
take the opportunity to try and help her expand her connections to
outside MTU. Manipal Medical College was the largest college in the
student town.

"Varsha's our PR person," he told Parth.

He nodded at her.

"I need to go to the washroom," she announced, getting up.

"So, how's that going?" Parth said with a slight smile when she
was out of earshot.

"What?" Aarav asked.

"Her. Is there something between you two?"

"Varsha? No, what even! Why would you say that?"

"I know that look in your eyes," he said mischievously. "The way
you look at her. I've seen that look before."

"You're wrong," Aarav said bluntly. "You don't know me, not
anymore."

The last sentence came out with a bitter undertone that Parth
seemed to catch. He raised his hands in surrender.

"Alright, alright," he said. "So, what have you been up to?"

Aarav went through the standard conversation, answering and

asking reciprocatory trivialities mechanically.

"I'll see you around then, we should catch up more soon," Parth
said finally, getting up to go join his friends who were at a table in the
corner.

"Definitely," Aarav replied, knowing that they would not be doing

that.
 He stabbed at a leftover piece of pasta with his fork and waited for
Varsha.

"Let's get the bill?" Varsha asked when she came back.

He nodded.

"I have to leave," she announced as the waiter walked away to the
billing counter. "I'll see you at the election."

She had been texting away as she walked back in, and Aarav
guessed that she had been making up with whoever it was that she
had come here to drink away.

There was a wild burst of laughter from the corner where Parth sat
downing beers with his friends.

"This is all we are, isn't it?" Aarav said suddenly.

"Hmm?" she said, looking up.

"This. I'm just someone who's conveniently around when you

need someone to eat with or someone around when you get drunk."

She put her phone down.

"I don't think I know what you're trying to say, Aarav," she said, her
voice flat.

Aarav winced inwardly, wondering why it was the uninebriated one

letting things slip.

"I don't mean anything," he said, trying to brush it away with a

forced laugh. "Besides, at the end of the day, just having someone to
sit down with for a meal is good enough."
 19: Car Crashes That Don't Make
Sounds
"Listen, the lab project—" Samar began.

"No, thanks," Shaleen cut him off.

"Come on, why not!" Samar said crossly.

In a reflection of the criticism the country's education system

attracted, MTU did not excel at providing practical experience through
coursework. But there were attempts, like the group project they'd
been assigned—building a job portal connecting companies and
students.

Maybe the college was just hoping someone would do a good

enough job that their submission could replace the actual website of
the placement department. The current site was an ancient, buggy
one that Samar half-suspected had been the result of a lab
assignment like theirs.

"Your grades are just okay, I'd rather sort through the candidates
by CGPA," Shaleen said.

"Yeah? How'd that go for you last time?"

Samar had listened to her rants after she'd teamed up with one of
the other class toppers, who'd turned out to be a slack-off when it
came to projects.

"Not too great, admittedly," she confessed. "I finished the actual
coding myself. All I asked her was to write up the report, but she
didn't even do that!"

"Yeah, I remember," Samar said.

 "Like, fine, I don't care if you don't do any of the work, but at least
finish things up at the end, you know."

"With that attitude, you must be fun in bed," he commented.

"Like you'll ever find out."

Samar tried again after a few minutes.

"So you've seen what you get with the toppers; try a friend now."

"Friend? It's a little too early to call you my friend," Shaleen said.

"We've known each other for over a year," Samar replied

incredulously.

"Yeah, exactly. Friend is such an intimate term, you need a few

more years."

Samar shook his head.

"You know that people generally call anyone who is more than a
casual acquaintance a friend?"

"Yes, it's terrible, they just throw the term around so loosely."

"Jesus," he shook his head again.

They walked the regular route from AB 5 out of the campus.

Shaleen glanced at the line of auto rickshaws lined up on the side

of the road.

"Can you drop me home?" she asked.

"Sorry, I only chauffeur for my friends."

He made sure to sound salty.

"Don't be so butthurt about it, man. It's nothing personal."

 "Neither is this," Samar shrugged.

"Come on, please. Living outside is already expensive, and do

you know how much these auto drivers charge?"

"Shouldn't have moved out if you're that poor," he countered.

"You have no idea what I had to deal with in the hostels. That
Chidanand dude is such a dick."

Chidanand was a professor who'd been climbing up the

administrative hierarchy rapidly owing to his connections and his
brutal oppression of students that came off as discipline. He currently
oversaw a reign of terror as the Chief Warden of the hostels.

"Ah yes. Someone once called him Chutiyanand, I've always been
disappointed that that nickname never caught on," Samar said.

"Well, your Chutiyanand once told me that if I got raped one day,
it'd be my own fault."

"No!"

He knew there were varying degrees of misogyny or sexism in

most adults and they didn't think much of openly commenting on the
clothes girls wore, but this was shocking even by their standards.

"Yeah. Tells you all you need to know about him, doesn't it?"

"Come on, let's go," Samar said suddenly.

"So, you're dropping me home?" she said, following him.

"Yeah, yeah, but it gets better, wait."

Samar was parked in a distant corner of the open-air area that

formed the parking lot. He turned the key in the ignition and rolled
down the windows to cool off the interiors, looking around to confirm
that there were no security guards or other students nearby.

"They don't have enough parking within the campus," he

explained, gesturing for her to get in, "and Chidanand only recently
applied for a reserved space, so he has to park here with all us
regular folks until he gets assigned one."

He pointed back at a red hatchback a row behind them, neatly

parked parallel to the narrow path leading to the exit. He'd been
noticing the Chief Warden here for a couple of weeks.

"New car," Shaleen said, noting the red Registered placeholder

sticker in place of a license plate. "Probably financed it by selling off
all the things he confiscates from the hostels for bullshit reasons."

"A new car is great," he agreed, shifting into first gear and pulling
out, "but one of the advantages of having a vehicle as old as mine is
that you have so many scratches and dents that one more will barely
be noticeable."

He eased his car past Chidanand's. Once his side-view mirror

passed the other car's front door, he turned the wheel. Metal scraped
against metal as he pushed on for a couple of seconds before turning
away again.

He'd have to wash off any paint stuck to his car, but other than
that, there wouldn't be any evidence leading to him.

Shaleen gasped, admiring the ugly gashes that now run across
half of Chidanand's car.
 20: The King Of The Playground
Aarav glanced at Samar and noticed a gleam of satisfaction
underneath the uncertain embarrassed look he was trying to mirror
off his peers.

"Could you get the door, please?" he asked Rhea, who was
closest to it.

The Standard's new Reporting Head shut the door that the former
editor had left open when she'd stormed out red in the face, battling
shock, humiliation, and fury.

And so ends Titirsha's career in our organisation, he thought. He

still found it hard to believe that she had been delusional enough to
show up today. Everyone except her had known she was going to
lose. Not all the editors would have been assertive enough in telling
her that she didn't have their vote, but it was still a ridiculous wipe-out
—a unanimous verdict against her.

Samar didn't seem like he was eager to take the stage. Despite
his occasional awkwardness in social situations, Aarav was the man
for monologues.

He cleared his throat, standing up. The new Board turned to him,
glad to be diverted from Titirsha's exit.

"Congratulations," he began, "to all of you. This is going to be a

tough year, I'm sure that you realise the weight of the responsibilities
that we have taken on today even as we take pride in the fact that we
have managed to make it to these positions. Two years ago, we all
joined The Standard because we thought that it was a great
organisation, a place where we could become a part of something
greater than ourselves."

He paused.
 "Well, that was most of us anyway," he said, winking at Navdha.

The editors laughed. The girls had shown up for The Standard's
recruitment test after being smitten by a devilishly good-looking Board
member they'd seen during the initial phase of club publicity. He'd
been a strategically chosen face for the organisation. The student
bodies in Manipal generally used their most attractive people for
recruitment drives.

"But as great as The Standard is," Aarav continued, "it is still a far
cry from what it could be, what it was meant to be. We know what our
audience wants and needs—a strong media body that will report on
things important to them, things that they care about. And you know
what, they fucking deserve it, a media body that does just that, a
media body that does not just bide away its existence covering
student club events. All of us today have the opportunity to use the
power that we now hold to try and become that media body. I look
forward to working with you as we do that."

He sat back down and let the room slip into unordered
discussions. The conversations died down after a few minutes, and
Aarav flipped open a black diary.

He usually remembered everything he needed to and hadn't

needed to maintain a notebook, but things would change now. He
would also be sitting through Student Council meetings where he
would have nothing to do with the agenda, and it would serve as a
scribble pad if nothing else.

"Listen up. Rahul wants me to remind everyone that the

applications for the Executive Board are open till next week and,
strictly speaking, we shouldn't have had these posts decided. So, we
keep the results quiet for now."

Aarav looked around, pausing for an extra few seconds on the

couple of people with historically loose tongues.
 "Raju, have you met with Prometheus' AppDev team?" he asked,
moving on to the next item.

The Tech Head nodded.

"They've told me what they need to integrate the liveblog into the
app, I'll start working on our site and get it done," he said.

"Great," Aarav said. "We should be getting a lot more eyeballs this
time because of it. And finally, we have a somewhat...interesting
opportunity for consideration. Samar, you've heard from Rahul on
this, want to take it?"

"Yeah," Samar said. "I'm sure you've all heard that the
Prometheus Photography and Videography category has resigned,
hoping to force the Student Council to enforce a ban on Manipal
Matters. The SC obviously is looking for a way out that doesn't
involve doing that. They need to figure it out before the issue goes up
to Kamath. Now, if they could find a team to replace PAV, a team that
they can trust and one that would be okay with other media bodies
covering the fest, that would be a very agreeable solution to their
problem."

Samar paused for effect.

"And The Standard could form that team," he finished.

"Uhh, we don't have a photography department," Rhea pointed

out.

"We don't," Samar agreed. "But this is our chance to change that.
Rahul's idea was that we get some people to head a new PAV team
loosely managed by The Standard. The college has a lot of
photographers not affiliated with any of the media bodies that we can
tap into. We already make schedules for covering all the events,
adding photographers alongside the writers won't be much extra
effort. The rest, we leave to the photographers."
 "Running something like PAV is not as easy as it sounds," Varsha
said. "It's what Manipal Matters and the Photography Club specialise
in, and even they struggle sometimes. We can't just walk in and
expect to figure it all out."

"Because we don't have a cohesive, permanent, experienced

photography team, right? Well, this is how we change that. We don't
need to get everything perfect this time, just tick off all the major
boxes and not fuck up too badly. Then, by the time that we recruit
new people again next semester, it'll be known that we run PAV, so
anyone who wants to be a part of the fest will come to us. Once we
start attracting talent, we'll have what we need to do things right."

Varsha began to argue back, but Aarav cut her off. This
conversation was going into dangerous territory.

"You're talking about establishing a permanent new department in

direct competition with the Photography Club and effectively making
the PAV category an off-shoot of The Standard. If PC hears that we
even discussed this, they will cut all ties with us. You know we rely on
them for visual content from every event we cover."

"Yes, but that is exactly the dependence that we can be rid of! We
haven't tried setting up a photography department because we had a
chicken and egg problem—we'd lose out to PC during recruitment
because we don't already have a team that's done good work, and
we can't have a department do any good work until people show up
for our recruitment. This situation is a silver fucking bullet, and this is
the only shot we get."

Samar's arguments made sense, but they seemed a little too

thought out and deliberated, especially considering that it had been
Rahul's initiative and they'd only learnt about it the day before.

The rest of the editors were quiet, content to wait out the battle.

"We've always had good relations with the Photography Club, we

get what we want from them without all the management headaches.
Do we really want a photography department?" Aarav asked.

"We don't if we're just going to stick to event reports, where we

churn out a few hundred words about what some club did, add a
couple of PC's photographs, and call it a day. But when it comes to
actual reporting, visuals are as important as words. If we're really
serious about bringing out good stories, trying to do some proper
journalism, I would say a photography department is pretty
important."

Aarav was stumped. He couldn't argue against that, Samar had

used Aarav's own vision to justify the move. He had no ammunition
left.

"I still don't think we should mess with the setup we have now, but
okay, let's take a vote," he said, giving up.

He couldn't hope for the rest of the Board to vote against it. It
wouldn't be any extra work for any of them, so they had nothing to
worry about. And it did sound like a nice new venture.

"All in favour?" Samar asked, and everyone except Aarav and

Varsha raised their hands.

Aarav scribbled a note in his book, wearing what he hoped was a

dignified air in defeat.

"So, how do we do this?" Navdha asked.

"We'll have a sit-down with the Council and get a confirmation,

then we start assembling our team," Samar replied.

The Board filed out once the meeting was concluded. Aarav left
the office last. He stood at the low wall surrounding the quadrangle,
listening to the others' receding footsteps.

A security guard dozed on his chair far away to Aarav's left. The
stray cat that frequented the building stretched on the lawn. Every
group of people called it by a different name. To The Standard, it was
Bushy. For all the passion and debate over what the feline's name
was, one might at least expect it to respond to one of them in some
way, but the cat haughtily refused to ratify any of the christenings.

He hadn't expected the world to change once he became the

Managing Editor, but he hadn't expected to feel exactly the same as
before either.

Aarav remembered that time they'd fired a writer who'd been

turning in reports without actually attending the events she was
supposed to be writing about. Thankfully, she had plagiarised The
Standard's own articles instead of someone else's. It was maybe a
little funny in hindsight—she'd submit a rehash of a report of a
previous year's version of the event, and almost nobody would even
notice.

It had been the previous Board's decision to kick the writer out,
but it had been Aarav's insistence that had convinced them. He had
done it because it had to be done, because he had to protect the
organisation. But the cruel thrill he'd got had scared him. Some part
of him had enjoyed the little bit of power he'd had over someone.

He now had more power than he'd ever had before. It was not of
much significance in the real world. The universities of Manipal
operated within its own little bubble. But the king of a playground was
still a king.
 21: An Unstable Balance
"I can't believe they just fucking quit!" Riti said. "What are they
even thinking?"

"They're holding Prometheus hostage. They just don't want to

accept that Manipal Matters is important, that their page has a lot of
reach that helps the fest," Dhruv said grimly.

"This is them acting as Photography Club Board members, not

PAV Category Heads," Riti said bitterly. "What are we going to do
now?"

"Some of the big-ticket events have always been exclusive to PAV,

I don't see what more we can offer, we've done all we can for them"
he replied uncertainly. "The problem is, they're not even willing to
negotiate unless we put a Manipal Matters ban on the table. And the
clock is ticking, if work gets held up for too long and the Student
Activities department notices, that'll be it. It'd be a simple decision for
Kamath, just cut out the outsiders and make everything exclusive to
our own people."

"Do you want me to try to talk to them informally? Might be easier

for me, since they're my batchmates," Riti offered.

Dhruv shook his head.

"No, Darshan said he'd make time and work with us. It's best he
takes the lead on this, what he says as President will have the most
weight. You focus on the budget."

"Is there anything we can do if we don't get PAV back? Maybe just
rely on Manipal Matters? They've given us some content in the past."

"I doubt it. We've managed to get them to help out with the
Prometheus page, but that was because they knew PAV was out for
their blood and they needed to make themselves useful. It was a
delicate balancing act, leveraging those two against each other. And
now, PAV just blew up the scales. Without them, we can't control
Manipal Matters."

"We're calling a full council meeting," he added after a while.

"Tonight. Darshan told me that Rahul has floated an interesting
proposition."
 22: A Predetermined Problem
Aarav glanced at his watch as Samar walked into the office.

Samar wondered why Aarav still bothered to wear an analogue

wristwatch in the age of smartphones and smartwatches. It seemed
so anti-utilitarian.

"Rahul asked us to be around," he explained to Samar. "He'll be

floating the idea to the SC right about now, and he seemed confident.
We go in after that to seal the deal, hopefully."

Samar nodded, pulling up a chair and positioning it directly

opposite Aarav.

"Listen," he said, sitting down. "You need to handle this meeting

by yourself."

Aarav shook his head.

"Nope, this is an EIC thing, you take it. I don't want to be mired up
in Council stuff, all that is you."

"Generally, yes, but it has to be you this time. Look, let's not lie to
ourselves about what I am, alright? I'm a hustler, and these Council
people, Darshan especially, they've dealt with enough of my kind to
not see me for what I am," Samar insisted.

"I don't give a fuck what they see you as," Aarav replied. "This is
your job, not mine."

"Aarav, you don't get it. It helps nobody if I am in that room. When
it comes to what we are proposing now, the Council doesn't want to
be bargaining and making deals. They want partners, they want to
get into a partnership with someone they can trust, a legitimate,
honest addition to the team. Which of us fits that description,
brother?"
 Aarav clenched his teeth.

This was the kind of stuff Aarav wanted out of his hands and
Samar hadn't expected him to be happy about it.

"Fine," he said, pointedly shifting himself away from Samar.

They sat in silence till the phone buzzed.

Samar watched Aarav walk out wordlessly and got to work.

Getting the SC's green light would just be half the struggle, as
Aarav had rightly argued in their Board meeting. They'd need to put
together a competent team with experienced people.

Prometheus categories had a three-level hierarchy. At the top

were the Category Heads. Once the Student Council picked the
Board members of the Photography Club to head PAV as Category
Heads, they generally brought in the second-years from the club to fill
the ranks of mid-level Organisers. At the bottom of the food chain
were wide-eyed eager volunteers: first-year students experiencing
their first college fest. Clubs were allowed to recruit freshers only after
Prometheus, so volunteers signed up solely on the basis of what
work the category did, becoming the only class without any club
affiliations.

This essentially meant that when The Standard took over the top
level of PAV, they wouldn't have to worry about the volunteers. But
they wouldn't have any Organisers without PC seniors to pull them in.

Samar had archived the Board formation announcements of all

the MTU clubs, and he searched through the posts now. Once he
was done, he waited for Aarav's return.

"Well, guess we're running PAV now," he said in response to

Samar's unasked question.

"That didn't take too long," Samar noted.

 Aarav shrugged.

"They didn't really discuss it much, their minds were made up

already. They just wanted to have a proper meeting with one of us,"
he explained.

"Okay," Samar nodded. "I took the liberty of texting Varsha, she
was nearby. Thought we could get the ball rolling on this."

"Alright," Aarav said, taking a seat. "What do you have in mind?"

"Well, none of us has experience with this, so it's a little tricky. On

the one hand, we'll need to hand over all operational responsibilities
to the Category Heads. But then we also want to retain control. If we
keep the number small, we can stay in the loop and keep them in
check. Makes sense?"

"How small? Because the category is normally pretty overworked

even with a full staff of six Heads."

"Maybe three. It'll be tougher on them. But given the

circumstances, the SC will cut us a lot of slack. PAV normally does a
whole bunch of content other than what's strictly necessary. We can
just stick to the essentials this first time."

Aarav was thinking it over when Varsha entered.

"We're a go on PAV, so we'll start looking at forming the team.

Three Category Heads," he informed her.

"Well, there isn't an abundance of candidates," Varsha said. "You'll

find lots of great photographers, but almost everyone with the kind of
organisational and leadership experience you're asking for will be in
Manipal Matters or Photography Club already. Our pool of potential
candidates outside this is the handful of people who worked for those
organisations till their second year and then dropped out or couldn't
make it to a Board position."
 "And don't forget about the Organisers," Samar prodded.

"Oh, yeah, now that you mention it," Varsha said. "Without PC,
you're also looking at very few Organisers for PAV. The job isn't as
demanding as being a Category Head though. It's a lot more of actual
photography than management, so you should be able to pull in
people from outside the clubs. But then you also need more
Organisers than Category Heads, so still something of a challenge."

Aarav frowned.

"We should have considered this part of the problem more before
jumping into a commitment," he said sharply.

Varsha fidgeted.

"Didn't occur to me at the time," she said softly. "In my defence, I

didn't really have a lot of time to think it over."

And, Samar thought, it wasn't really her job to either. He had

known about the problem, of course, except that he didn't really look
at it as a problem.

He pulled up the list he'd made and handed his phone to Varsha.

"I drew up a list of potential Category Heads," he said.

"These are Manipal Matters Board members," she said slowly.

"Yes," he said.

"Manipal Matters Board members, in the Prometheus

Photography and Videography department, reporting to the Board of
The Standard?" Aarav laughed.

"Yes," Samar repeated.

"Manipal Matters covers the fest on their own, that's kind of what
got this whole mess started, remember?" Aarav said. "Not that that's
the craziest part of the idea though."

"Yeah, they have their own coverage, so here's what we'll ask
them for. Three of their senior guys work independently at the head of
PAV. They also bring over some of their juniors as Organisers, so
we'll have enough hands at the mid-level too. Manipal Matters is a
large organisation, they can spare the manpower."

"You must be out of your fucking mind, this is Manipal Matters

we're talking about! Forget the fact that we have the town's longest
and strongest rivalry between us, you're suggesting contracting
manpower from a competing organisation."

"Technically, they're going to be working for the Student Council,

not for The Standard. We're not going to put our name on the
category, so it's workable," Samar said coolly.

"You guys can work out the technicalities of who's working for who
later," Varsha interrupted, "but why would Manipal Matters even
consider this proposal? They have their own coverage."

"Because it's in their best interest," Samar replied, a glint in his

eyes. "They will realise, and I mean we will help them realise, that if
they help us run PAV well this one time, then the Photography Club
will have permanently lost their hold over the category. It'll become
The Standard's category instead."

"They don't like us any better than the Photography Club, so what
difference does it make to them?" Varsha asked.

"The difference it makes is that The Standard will not demand any
restrictions on other media bodies during the fests. The Student
Council has always had to handicap Manipal Matters because PC's
PAV demanded it. Manipal Matters knows this. But The Standard has
no record of doing anything of the sort, and we will promise them that
will remain the case going forward. Tell me that's not going to
incentivise them to help us pull this off."
 There was a shocked silence as the scale of the deal Samar had
laid out sank in.

"Nope, no way," Aarav said finally. "It'll look like we planned the
whole thing with Manipal Matters to help us take PAV over from PC in
return for offering Manipal Matters better fest access."

And he doesn't even know we're the reason PAV resigned in the
first place, Samar thought, fighting back a laugh.

"So what if it does?" Samar said. "Photography Club is going to

hate us irrespective of how we cut them out of PAV. And the Student
Council wants to give Manipal Matters better fest access anyway,
they're only going to be happy if we say we don't mind that."

Aarav looked at Varsha.

"I don't know about the ethics, but he's not wrong about PC hating
us and SC not minding. And working with Manipal Matters is the
easiest way. We can build up our team for the next fest and run the
category without them after this," she said.

Aarav shook his head, his jaw tightening in resolve.

"No. Fuck it, we'll do it the harder way. Varsha, you said there
should be a few candidates for Category Heads."

"Well, yes, but like I said, these are people who dropped out or
didn't make it to their club Boards. In most cases, there are probably
good reasons why. The others, well, you won't know if they're capable
until after you select them. But yeah, I can start looking into it if you're
sure that's the way to go."

There was a heavy reluctance in her words. She wanted to take

the easier way and go with Manipal Matters.

Aarav seemed to have realised that too.

"Let's put Sid on the team," he said suddenly.

 "What?" Samar asked, startled.

"Sid. He's a PR person, but he also worked in Manipal Matters'

Photography team till his second year. He's one of our own, so solves
some issues with respect to control. I know fourth-years don't work
anymore, but given the circumstances, we can ask, as a favour."

"Fourth-years don't work, but also Sid doesn't work," Samar

snapped. "The man's all talk, he hasn't contributed even when he was
supposed to. I wouldn't trust him with this."

"I'd trust him more than someone from Manipal Matters," said
Aarav.

"No, shut up," he continued, seeing Samar had another argument

ready. "Clearly, you knew it was going to come down to this. You
didn't tell us before, because you wanted it to come down to this. But
you're not going to get to dictate how it goes from here. That's it."

"Alright, you do what you want then, good luck with it," Samar said
in a fake surrender.

He realised that he didn't have to argue this. Aarav would be

forced to come around. There was no way Sid would take this up.
He'd always shirked responsibility, and it would take a lot of
convincing to get him to take it up in his final year. Even the most
dedicated workers just wanted to get drunk and enjoy their last
semester in town.

And even if Aarav somehow managed to get Sid to agree, he

wouldn't be able to pull together the rest of the crew from scratch, not
when Varsha, who was their best hope at scouting and signing up
people, wasn't fully committed to the plan of action.

There was only one way it could go. He'd already won.
 23: Creative Destruction
"Samar, you fucking rat!"

"Hello, Sagarika," Samar said without flinching. He'd heard worse

than that.

"You set me up; you lied to me," she hissed, jabbing an accusing
finger hard in his chest.

"I did say that the SC wouldn't reconsider things as long as PAV
was still there, that much was true," he said, unable to stop himself
from riling her up even more.

"You planned everything just to get them out of the way," she
continued, disgust seeping in with the fury.

"Look, Sagarika, I did what I did, and I already know what I did, so
why are we having this conversation? What are you going to do about
it?"

That threw her off, and she seemed to struggle to process his
nonchalance.

"If people knew," she said after a while. "If I told them it was you,
you'd be done. Finished."

"Who is them? The Student Council? Even if they take your

accusation at face value, it doesn't help you much; you'd have come
out as the person who nudged PAV to do this, you'd be as
responsible as me. Not to mention that it was still PAV who did this,
so it doesn't clear them of any blame at all."

"Maybe I don't care about that anymore and I just want to see you
dead," she said unconvincingly.
 "Even then, it'd be inconvenient for the SC to believe you. They've
finally got a solution to a problem that's been around for years—
they're getting new partners who will not make a fuss about Manipal
Matters. They would be inclined to think that PAV is just trying to shift
the blame and undo everything now that their strike is backfiring. I
wasn't even around when the idea of The Standard taking over was
raised. When there is no proof of anything, why wouldn't they choose
to believe whatever makes things easiest for them?"

He waited a moment to make sure she didn't have a response

before stepping around her and walking on. It wouldn't help to be
seen with her.

Sagarika had come to him in a state of fury unable to think

straight, and he'd taken advantage by making it look like the SC was
the only potential recourse. She could have done some damage by
going to Rahul who in turn could have brought it to the new Board,
and he'd wanted to steer her away from thinking of that. He was
hopeful that she'd decide against it even if she did consider that
option later. She couldn't be certain Rahul would want to hurt The
Standard by taking her side or that he didn't share the rest of the SC's
frustrations with the old PAV.

Samar focused back on the task at hand. The keylogger on the

lab computer had worked as it was supposed to. Nikhil had worked
on the Youth Conference as Samar had expected. Samar now had
the credentials for the admin account of the Conference website, their
database of registrations, and the website-linked email they were
using for official communications. He also had the passwords to
Nikhil's Facebook and Gmail accounts. Since Nikhil had already
logged in from this lab computer, it would have been registered as a
trusted device and would allow Samar to bypass the two-factor
authentication and get in without an OTP.

The lab was empty and he got to work. With the college intranet
firewall blocking WhatsApp Web, he guessed Nikhil would have used
Facebook and email to communicate with his team. Samar needed
some idea of what was happening inside the Youth Conference to
figure out what exactly to do.

He spent the next fifteen minutes going through Nikhil's

correspondence, and then powered off the computer and shifted to
his own seat before the rest of his class began trickling in slowly.

"Time for you to really earn your keep," he said, keeping his voice
low and slipping next to Shaleen once she was seated. "Here's the
deal. Your keylogger gave us access to the Youth Conference mail,
site, database. What I need to do is disrupt their operations."

Nikhil's conversations had been revealing. In typical fashion, he'd

gone ahead and hacked together the website and integrated the
payment portals on his own, without assembling the usual tech team.
Most of the other people involved in the Conference had disapproved,
wanting to do things properly with experienced techies. Samar knew
they'd resent the fact that Nikhil had ignored them.

"Define disrupt," Shaleen nudged him.

"First thing is simple, mess around with their inbox settings to

block emails from outside the college. You can use the domain name
to filter them out. The speakers and panellists they've hired, anything
they send would simply not reach the organisers. I expect they'll
figure it out and fix it after a while, but if they don't and it becomes a
bigger mess, great.

Here's the important bit. I want their attendee registrations

derailed so they'll have their hands full for at least a few weeks trying
to get things back on track. From what I could see, they've integrated
a Paytm payment portal on their site and are using their own
database to maintain records and automate the generation of
registration numbers and entry passes. I'm thinking, you play around
a little here, break some of these processes."

"Hold up, I am not getting involved in anything involving money.

Not that any of this other stuff is perfectly legal, but if things go wrong
with the finances, it's way more serious and will attract more
attention. I'm not planning on getting arrested or suspended."

"Do I look like an idiot to you? No, don't answer that. Of course
we're not touching the money, even I don't want that kind of trouble.
Let the payments go through, you will just break the generation of
receipts and passes. When someone pays, the money goes where it
should, but they get an error message asking them to contact the
Youth Conference team, who can still manually confirm that the
payment has been done and finish up the registration process. We're
just making it more difficult and sending them hunting through the site
to try to figure out what's going on. As an added bonus, the site is
also registered with the Volunteer Corps' Faculty Head, so we can
make it such that it's his email id that's shown when the registration
fails."

Since it would be the Faculty Head's recommendation that'd boost

Nikhil's chances the most when he applied for The Standard's
Executive Board, he needed to ruin that relationship. If the professor's
inbox were to get flooded with complaints...it was known that Nikhil
had built the site.

"Should be possible, changing some configurations would

probably break things enough. It'd also be unlikely to give rise to any
suspicions, hard to diagnose exactly what changed and why,"
Shaleen mused.

"Easy enough?"

"Eh," she replied, reluctant to admit something was difficult for her.
"I just have to be careful to not make it obvious someone has been
tampering."

"Alright, I will talk to you later then," he said, getting up.

"By later, you mean the end of the lab when you'll need my code
again," Shaleen smirked.
 24: A Permanence In Carvings And
Chewed-Up Gum
Aarav watched as Varsha's normally neat handwriting turned into
a hurried, careless scrawl as her pen flew furiously across her paper.
The content moved directly to her notebook from the slide deck open
on her phone propped up against a water bottle on the table, with
little processing or absorption on her part.

He wondered how the administration could remain so blind to how

their open-book assessment pattern was actually playing out. Aarav
had heard from someone in the Council that Academic Director
Adhiraj's idea was students would simply walk into class with their
notes like on any other day without having to study, thus making the
assignments less of a burden. On the ground, it actually meant hours
and hours of handwriting textbooks and slides. A good percentage of
the lecturers weren't competent enough that students walked out of
class with enough notes. There seemed to be no plan to bridge this
chasm between reality and the Academic Director's imagination.

Aarav thought of the interview he'd got with Adhiraj and felt a buzz
of excitement. Samar would take Varun with him the next day to get it
done. Aarav had gone over and finalised the questions to be asked.

Thanks to Nakul Kumar backing Aarav, the Academic Director had

been convinced it'd help to explain the rationale behind their move. It
would have, if their reasoning had been sound. Not that Aarav's plan
was an ambush or anything sneaky. He was just going to
democratise the college a little by creating a flow of information. It
could only help to have everyone in power get used to the idea of
having to explain themselves publicly.

"Halle-fucking-lujah," Varsha exclaimed triumphantly, throwing her

pen down.

Aarav leaned over and flipped back the pages.

 "Yikes," he said.

"Theory subjects make for the longest notes," she acknowledged,

slamming the book shut.

She stood up and stretched.

Outside, a light rain was easing to a stop, the overcast sky dulling
the world's colour a little bit.

"I want to go to the lake," Varsha announced.

"Hmm?"

"The lake," she repeated. "I have a feeling the sky is going to look
really pretty, the lake would be a good place to be at."

"Let's go!" she added explicitly, seeing that Aarav wasn't catching
on.

They walked out of their office and through the Main Gate, then
navigated their way through the muddy parking lot to Aarav's car. He
turned onto the Manipal main road and took a left at the Post Office
before being forced to a stop behind a line of stationary vehicles.
Even Manipal's roads got jammed up for a few minutes when half the
road was being dug up like it was in front of him now.

He sighed as he switched into first gear. He'd had a choice of

three routes and had chosen the worst.

"Is this where you studied?" Varsha asked, when he'd inched his
Honda forward and drawn level with the gates of a school on the
right.

"For fourteen years," Aarav confirmed, turning to look at the

building.
 It had grown massively with the town, a huge new building
springing up as the school gradually went from Kindergarten-6th
Grade to Kindergarten-12th Grade, but the same old stone entrance
of the old building still stood strong.

He noticed a large pile of furniture piled in one corner of the front

yard. It was familiar even from a distance.

"You see those desks over there?" he asked.

"Uh-huh."

"One of those probably has the initials of my high school crush

carved on it over and over," he said.

"What!"

"Yeah, guess they're finally getting replaced. They've been used

as canvases by everyone over the decades, you can find all kinds of
messages and drawings on them. I was crazy over this one girl back
then, could never talk to her, so I used the outlet many others
seemed to have found attractive. Etched her initials on my desk using
a compass."

"That's cute," Varsha laughed. "Please tell me you finally talked to

her someday."

"Nah, getting over it was easier," he said.

"I feel like you haven't changed that much."

"Oh, I talk to girls before falling for them now."

"Yeah, I'm sure you do a lot of talking," she teased.

The traffic cleared up as they moved past the construction site,

allowing Aarav to speed up.
 The Mannapalla, from which Manipal had got its name, stretched
out a few metres in front of the small parking lot where Aarav
stopped.

He checked his phone as he got out.

"Sid is a hard no on running PAV for us," he told Varsha grimly.

"Oh well," she said. "I can see why you wanted him, but maybe it's
for the best. Samar was right about Manipal Matters being the easiest
way."

Aarav gritted his teeth.

"Samar knew. He knew we'd end up having to do this. He brought

up Manipal Matters only after we were committed because he knew
we'd never have gone with it if we'd known beforehand."

"I wouldn't be surprised if that were true, but it doesn't change the
fact that we are committed."

Aarav swallowed his fury. He had to go along with it now.

"Have you thought about who from Manipal Matters?" he asked

her.

"Do you know Yash? He's a chill dude, doesn't pay much attention
to club rivalries and all that. He's on their Board as a Deputy Head of
Photography. He knows his stuff enough to be of value but isn't
critical enough for Manipal Matters to not be able to spare him. Ideal.
And Manipal Matters is a large organisation, he will know a few more
similar people he can bring along."

"Fine," Aarav said.

"Now let work go, please," Varsha said, probably noticing the
grudging undertone in his reply.
 She hopped the small divider separating the parking lot from the
interlocked path that ran the lake's circumference.

Aarav followed her to the edge of the water.

"See, I was right about the sky," Varsha pointed out.

It was nearing dusk, and the sky was a brilliant shade of blue,
streaked pink and purple in parts, balanced with the sombre grey of
heavy monsoon clouds. Beneath this canvas, a gentle wind sent
ripples across the dark surface of the water.

"Yes, it's very...pretty," he acknowledged. "I'd forgotten how nice

this place was."

"I'd love it more if it weren't for the mosquitos, though," Varsha

said, swatting at her arms. "But you'd forgotten? How come you don't
come here?"

Aarav shrugged.

"I don't get the urge to go anywhere by myself, it's usually just
when someone else initiates it."

"And since nobody seems to have, is this your 'I don't have
friends' line again?"

"I just haven't maintained many friendships for a while," he said

nonchalantly, trying to get her off the topic.

It had started to drizzle again, and large droplets were sliding off
the leaves of the trees that flanked the footpath. Aarav shook open
the umbrella he'd taken out of the car.

"Well, I'm here," Varsha said, stepping beneath the umbrella's

cover.

"For now," he said without thinking.

 "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" she demanded
indignantly.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to say that," he apologised hurriedly.

I didn't mean to say that out loud, he thought. He had no illusions

about her, he wasn't a priority.

She shook her head disbelievingly, unforgiving but willing to let it

go for the moment.

"When were you here last?" she asked.

"It was before college, when I still had my school circle around.
We were hooked on Pokémon Go, and the lake was a good spot to
catch the less common ones, so we'd walk around here."

"You never really cared about the lake itself much then, huh?"
Varsha mused.

"Not particularly, no. But I've sometimes thought about what it'd be
like if someone developed this place properly. Get some boating, food
stalls, play areas, charge an entry fee and generate some revenue."

She shook her head again.

"Isn't it enough that it can just be? That you can just stand here
with someone, look at the water, the sky, the birds. No, you just have
to think of profit."

Aarav was about to argue, then remembered the thing he liked

best about the lake was a painting of it by one of their artists. It had
been part of a series of college hangout spots, and had got great
traction on Facebook. Sensing an opportunity, he'd got the old Board
to get permission to put the series up on the digital board in the
Academic Area, with The Standard logo blazoned on it. Making
themselves visible to the freshers before their recruitment drive would
help.
 Varsha pulled closer to him as the drizzle grew into a heavier rain,
linking her arm through his.

"You're right," he said. "It's enough."

 25: Selling Different Parts
"Sponsorship should have got us more sponsors by now, they
need to get their thumbs out of their asses and get the fuck to work!"
Agni thundered.

Riti sighed softly.

MTU had an intense work culture, and Category Heads had a

strong sense of duty when it came to the fest work. Sponsorship
would have gone into overdrive since they'd had to drop Mahesh
even without any urging from the Council, but that didn't stop Agni
from castigating them at every turn.

"They've been to anybody in the district who could cut a check,"

Eeshan said patiently. "There's only so much they can do, most
businesses just aren't going to see the value in what we offer no
matter what."

"But," he continued before Agni could go off again. "A couple of

clothing stores bought into the logos on the two thousand Standard
newsletters, and a restaurant paid for an ad on the digital board."

"How much does that bring in?" Agni asked.

"Fifty grand."

"So even if you assume that shifting money to the events with
elastic participation numbers gets us one and a half lakh more in
sales, we're still three lakh rupees down," Agni worked out.

Eeshan nodded.

"And we have nothing more to offer and no more sponsors to try,

so we're done."
 Agni had marched off to Nagaraj Kamath to demand that the
Student Activities department help make up the difference. From the
fact that he had never brought the matter up again, Riti guessed that
it had not gone well.

"What happens if our projected revenues and expenses aren't

balanced when we present the budget to the Director and Nagaraj
Kamath?" Riti asked Eeshan.

"The fest is usually in the red, in the range of ten to thirty

thousand. But if our projections are worse than that, they'd force us to
make cuts," he explained.

"And if our projections show us balanced, but the revenue falls

short at the end of the fest?" Agni asked.

"The balance amount would come out of Revels," Eeshan said

firmly.

His tone reassured Riti that there'd be no cooked books or

deliberately bad forecasts under him, even if Agni would have liked to
kick that can down the road to the next Council. But it also reminded
her that if things went wrong, at least part of the reckoning would be
during Revels. She would be Cultural Secretary then, and that fest
was tough enough without Prometheus debts weighing it down.

Agni's phone buzzed.

"My Swiggy dude is here," he announced, walking out briskly.

No vehicles were allowed inside the college campus, so students

had to walk to the Main Gate to collect food deliveries.

"Perfect timing, I was just starting to feel hungry," Eeshan grinned.

He was known to take generous samples of any food around him.

"Hey," Riti said slowly, "those food delivery people were huge
sponsors last year, right?"
 "Yeah, but they were just starting up in Manipal then and needed
to make inroads. Once one of them got in, the others had to follow for
fear of losing popularity. It was a good year for us then. But they're
well-established now. Everyone knows about them already, so here's
no point in spending more for visibility."

"What if it wasn't just a publicity boost they were buying? There's

a huge demand for food delivery to hostels after perm time. We're all
locked in the hostels at ten pm, but nobody sleeps that early. There is
only one place, Apoorva Mess, that can deliver to the hostels. The
order volumes there are huge, especially leading up to and during
exams. There is a huge market for hostel food delivery."

"That's true, but so what?"

"We need to offer something that sponsors would want, right? The
food delivery platforms would love a chance to serve this market."

"But that doesn't have anything to do with fests," Eeshan argued.

"On the face of it, it doesn't. But if we could try to figure out a way
to sell this, it'd be worth it," Riti said.

She could see Eeshan's money-mind thinking it through and

crunching some numbers.

"Worth discussing," he conceded. "Let's bring the others in."

It took an hour for all four Senior Council members who still
mattered to assemble.

Dhruv, as the General Secretary, would be most familiar with the

college machinery and best suited to judge the feasibility of the
matter. Darshan would have to use all his charm and pull with the
administration, assuming that they decided to move ahead with it.

"For context, since the two of you weren't at our last meeting,
we're still three lakhs down. But Riti has an idea," Eeshan briefed
them.

"There is something we could offer to the food delivery apps. We

can let them tap into the demand for food post-perm by allowing
deliveries to the hostels," Riti began. "People would even be willing to
pay maybe an extra twenty to thirty bucks, because the alternative is
to starve or eat from Apoorva Mess. The delivery partners don't make
more than thirty rupees per order, from what I know. So that
surcharge doubles their cut, they will be well compensated for having
to go through any security checks imposed by Campus Security.

Restaurants might even start staying open an hour or two longer

to service this demand. The apps take a cut out of the bill amount, so
this extra volume will be great for them. We might be looking at four,
five lakhs in sponsorship here. If we convince just one of them, the
others will follow in fear of losing market share."

She'd gone over the numbers with Eeshan before the others
arrived.

"I suppose you're right insofar as what you've said, and I'm
assuming Eeshan has heard this already and agrees it might work.
But the problem is this would not be a Prometheus sponsorship.
They're essentially buying the rights to set up a business within
campus. We do not have the power to sell them that," Darshan said.

"I know," Riti said. "But I'm sure we can find a way to frame this
deal into something acceptable to work around that, we can have that
discussion later. We first need to decide if we want to do it, we'll need
all the Council's willpower and capital with the administration on this."

"We need to do it," Agni urged them. "We don't have any other
options."

"Problem is," Dhruv mused, "there's a reason we have restricted

entry at all the gates, right? It's definitely a security risk to let
outsiders into the campus."
 "How about," Darshan said slowly. "We start this off slow. Make it
applicable only for the fests: both Prometheus and Revels. And the
two weeks of Pre-Revels and Pre-Prometheus too."

The fortnight leading up to the fests was the busiest: the

categories had to finish up all their work, and preliminary rounds of
most competitions took place then. Consequently, those involved in
the work got perm extensions that let them work on campus outside
the hostels after ten pm. People who lived in apartments or worked in
categories like Outstation Management—who received delegates
from out of town and provided them with accommodation—also got
gate passes that let them move in and out.

"How does that help?" Eeshan asked doubtfully.

"It ties them to the fest. They become something like food
suppliers. We connect it to another fest requirement—a lot of people
are working all night and are locked inside campus with just one food
option that's far away from the academic area where the action is."

"I think it also bypasses the security argument," Dhruv jumped on.
"Letting people into campus isn't that outrageous a proposal when
seen in the context of the fest. We already have plenty of exceptions
being sanctioned by Kamath. Students with gate passes move
around freely, some outstation delegates enter late at night to take up
their accommodation in hostels, and contractors need to set up stalls
or put up banners or set up the stage for ceremonies. What're a few
more people?

The guards can take down drivers' names, numbers, license

numbers, whatever, before they are granted entry, so security won't
be compromised. Like Riti said, the delivery boys will be okay with
jumping through these hoops as they'll be getting paid more."

"That's all great, but we're now talking about benefits for barely a
month out of the whole year," Eeshan pointed out.
 "The actual agreement on paper, yes," Darshan said. "But that's
why Sponsorship isn't going to close this deal on their own. We send
Riti, as a representative of the Student Council, both the current and
the future."

"And what do I do?" Riti asked, registering that Darshan had just
endorsed her as the next Cultural Secretary. Student Council
elections were decided long before the Class Representatives
gathered to vote, in informal conversations where friendships and
club loyalties held sway. Darshan was well-loved, and his word could
easily carry elections.

"You make them see that we're not just making them fest partners.
We are opening a door with the administration and letting them get
their foot firmly in. If all goes well, the college sees it's safe enough,
which sets a strong platform from which to get this privilege extended
throughout the year. You assure them that the Council will be there to
back them and that our position to the admin will be that they're safe
to work with and the student populace needs this."

Riti looked around the room. The other three were satisfied.

"Meet with Sponsorship and get a move on ASAP, Dhruv and I will
take the offer to Kamath as soon as you get back to us," Darshan
said, reading the room too.

"Yes, Mister President," she said.

 26: A Gathering Storm
It had taken Shaleen just a couple of days to poke around the
Youth Conference systems and sabotage them. Samar expected all
hell to have broken loose by now.

He entered the lab early again and logged back into Nikhil's
accounts. He couldn't get the complete picture of what was
happening from here because most of the conversations would be
over WhatsApp, but he was hoping to get enough to have a rough
idea.

He dug through Nikhil's correspondence and was satisfied. From

what he could see, the plan had worked perfectly. There were some
angry emails from the Faculty Head demanding to know what had
gone wrong and why it wasn't fixed yet. The rest of the team seemed
to have had no qualms about throwing Nikhil under the bus when the
Faculty Head had wanted to know who was responsible for the mess.

Samar called Rahul as soon as he got out. Millennial culture

demanded that he text first, but he had no patience for it right now.

"Where are you right now? Can we talk?" he asked.

He walked at a brisk pace and headed out the Main Gate. Heavy
winds swept past. It looked like a storm was gathering. He pulled out
his old black jacket from his backpack. He'd stoved it in a semester
ago and never used it. He dusted it off as best he could and slipped it
on.

He went past the vada pav stall and reached Big Daddy's. Samar
still wondered at the thinking that had gone into naming the cafe that.

The glass door revealed that only a couple of the half-dozen

tables cramped together were occupied. Rahul sat alone at the single
table on the landing outside the door with a sandwich and fries in
front of him. He wiped his fingers on a tissue as Samar approached.
 "The Standard needs one last thing from you," Samar said, taking
a seat.

"You're the EIC for all intents and purposes, you handle it," Rahul
said, waving a hand dismissively.

"For most intents and purposes," Samar corrected him. "The

Student Activities department still recognises you as the head of The
Standard. You need to talk to Nagaraj Kamath."

"To Kamath? What for?"

"To convince him to move our interview up to around a week from

now. That is to say, hold it right after the deadline for filing the
application ends."

The Student Activities department typically took its time

interviewing The Standard's EB candidates. There was no hurry, as
the rest of the Student Council did not get elected until months later.

"Why would he do that, and why would we want him to do that?"

Rahul asked.

"Let me answer your second question first. Because we have the

right opportunity to avoid a lot of trouble later on. Nikhil—"

"This again," Rahul snapped. "I've told you to leave it alone."

"I know you think Nikhil applying for our Board isn't anything to
worry about, but why take the risk? If we can prevent him from even
trying without doing anything wrong, why shouldn't we?"

"I doubt you and I have the same idea of what counts as wrong,"
Rahul laughed.

"Hear me out, Rahul," said Samar, letting the tiniest hint of anger
seep through.
 "Fine, go on."

"I hear there are serious issues with the Youth Conference's
website and that Nikhil is taking a lot of heat for it. He won't have the
bandwidth to apply if the interview is in a week. And the Volunteer
Corps' Faculty Head won't back him even if he does," Samar said.

"Okay, I'm not going to ask more about that. You'll tell me anything
to have your way, and I have no way of knowing how much you're
bullshitting me," Rahul said dismissively.

"Can you at least believe that what I am asking you for is actually
going to protect us from Nikhil?"

Rahul might not trust or like Samar, but he had to recognise that
no matter what else, Samar worked for The Standard. And it was
Samar's own post that Nikhil was threatening, so Rahul should also
see that his personal incentives aligned with The Standard's here
anyway.

"I suppose I can give you that much," Rahul said grudgingly.

"Now to your first question. Kamath will go along with it because

you'll explain that The Standard has the additional burden of handling
Prometheus' Photography and Videography department this time. He
must know that it's us juniors handling the fest. You'll tell him that PAV
responsibilities call for The Standard's Editor-in-Chief and Managing
Editor to work closely with the Council and the other categories, and
so The Standard needs the Student Activities department's formal
decision on the new Executive Board."

"No," Rahul declared. "I want no part of whatever you're up to, I'm
not risking my fingerprints on anything."

"You have nothing to worry about. Nobody will know I asked you
for this. And it is a perfectly legitimate thing to ask Kamath for,
nobody can question it. I'm sure you can even take the SC President
with you and he'll tell Kamath you're right. You will have no blood on
your hands."
 "Come on," he said forcefully when Rahul remained unconvinced,
slamming his right hand down on the table and standing up so that he
towered over his senior. The bright ceiling lights from inside Big
Daddy's passing through the translucent painted glass wall gave the
back of his hand a reddish glow. "Do this one last thing for your media
body! Give me one good reason you can't do this, one way in which
you're risking yourself or the organisation."

Rahul toyed with his glass of water for a minute, thinking.

"Fine," he said, the appeal to reason and duty overpowering

Rahul's misgivings.

"Thank you. Enjoy your retirement after this," Samar said, turning
back.

"You don't like me much, do you?" Rahul asked before he could

leave.

"You're not the worst, but I wouldn't jump on any grenades for you,
no."

"I had nothing against you, you know. In fact, I'd had a feeling
you'd be taking my place right when you first became an editor. For
whatever it's worth, I did try to help you get there whenever I could."

Samar was a little surprised at this sudden honesty but wasn't

going to cut Rahul any slack.

"I think everyone knows who you really want instead, Rahul. You
wouldn't have tried to help me out if Navdha had had a better CGPA
and been in the running for EIC. Anyway, you should have saved
some of this concern for someone who actually needed it."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about, I've been fair to all
of you."
 "What's fair? I've seen how hard Aarav tries with you, how much
he needs more than just the bare minimum of cold duty. But then he's
a second-class citizen like all the rest of us. But whatever, you keep
doting on Navdha, fuck if I care."

Rahul's mouth hardened. He'd touched a nerve.

"You know, Samar, people are going to have enough of you

walking all over them at some point," he said.

"People were having enough of me way before I started walking

over them, Rahul", Samar shot back. "Figured might as well get what
I want from them first."
 27: Nothing Formal
Aarav was pleasantly surprised when his phone rang. He'd put in
the effort to set a ringtone on his phone for the rare occasions when
someone called instead of texting. After a friend had talked him out of
picking something from the Emo Trinity, he'd settled on the opening
soundtrack from La La Land.

"Small problem," Rhea greeted him. "We were supposed to

publish the report of the International Civil Engineering Society's
workshop today, but the Photography Club isn't sharing any
photographs."

"Damn it," he cursed mildly.

With the whole PAV drama, PC wouldn't be helping them out. The
Standard generally needed images from events for the article
thumbnail and the main body. This workshop wasn't particularly
interesting, but ICES was an official club of MTU and The Standard
was therefore obliged to cover their events.

"What do we do?" Rhea asked him.

"Get the writer to contact someone from ICES," Aarav suggested.

"Some of their members might have taken a few photos and could
send us those."

"Okay, I'll let her know," Rhea said.

"Oh, and put up a message on our WhatsApp group," he added.

"Tell all our writers to take photos at the events they're covering. We
won't be getting anything from PC for a while, at least."

He quickened his pace as he hung up, recognising the back of

Samar's head a little distance ahead of him in the crowd swarming
out of the classrooms.
 "Did you see that message about the MAC binding?" he asked
when he caught up.

"Yeah. Everyone's livid," Samar said.

MTU students got only 30 gigabytes of internet data per month on

the college Wi-Fi network, a massively insufficient cap for
downloading shows and games. Nearing the end of the month,
people ended up having to borrow login credentials from friends who
had some data to spare. The accounts of people who didn't live in the
hostels and thus didn't use the campus Wi-Fi were particularly
valuable.

But a bombshell had just landed. They'd all got SMSes informing
them that accounts would soon be bound to their device MAC
addresses. Each account would be restricted to just two devices—the
unique id of the first two devices used to log in would be saved, and
no other devices could be used with those credentials. This would
effectively prevent sharing of accounts.

"Yeah, it's ridiculous," Aarav agreed. "Feels like they just want us
to pay for a higher data plan by stopping us from borrowing accounts.
But what I wanted to ask you was, who in the administration is
responsible for this? Not necessarily for this new policy in particular,
but whose portfolio does something like this fall under?"

"Hmm, let me see," Samar said, taking his phone out and opening
up a list.

"That'd be the Director of Campus IT. Why, though?"

Aarav was impressed at the meticulous databases Samar always

seemed to have.

"I want to see if he'll talk to us and give a statement explaining the
motive behind this," Aarav told him.

"I don't know if he'll go for it. He's not one of the big shots, might
be afraid of saying something he shouldn't."
 "You never know, some of these people actually like talking and
being heard. There's no harm in trying, anyway" Aarav argued.

"Fair enough. His office should be in the Innovation Centre. Are

you headed to the office, by the way?"

"Yeah, I'll call up a writer and get started on this."

"Cool, I think I'll swing by too and hang around for a bit if
anybody's around," Samar said.

Aarav typed out a message to the rest of his Board to brief them
about the piece, but paused before hitting send. He did not want to
open this up to a discussion or subject the idea to a vote; it would
slow things down. But it wouldn't look good if he acted unilaterally
without letting the others voice their opinions. He had to do a lot of
things on his own—his peers might do their part, but he carried all the
reporting work. Despite that, he still had to keep the peace and not
make them feel undermined.

He placed a quick call to Rhea and told her what he was doing.
True to character, she raised no objections. He returned to the
message he was typing and added that he'd already talked to her
about it. This technically came under the Reporting Head's portfolio,
so nobody could have a problem when both Rhea and Aarav were on
board.

They reached the office. Aarav opened the door and walked in to
find Navdha preaching passionately to three of their writers.

"Hello, what's happening here?" he asked in surprise.

"Just a workshop of sorts," Navdha replied. "I'd edited the articles

they'd written over the summer vacation and had a few thoughts on
what they could be doing better, so I called them over for a short
session."
 "I see. Kids, could you give us the room for a couple of minutes?"
he addressed the juniors, who filed out promptly.

"Did anyone else from the Board know about this?" he asked with
a frown after making sure the door was firmly shut.

"They're my writers, I don't see why I had to let anyone else

know," Navdha replied defiantly.

"They're our writers," he said before realising it sounded like he

was making a communism joke. "You're responsible for quality as
Head of Writing, but you still ought to let the rest of us know if you're
holding workshops or anything like that."

While Board members and editors did give feedback and help the
writers out on anything they worked with them on, Navdha was
overstepping right now. Sessions for writers were held after
everyone's input and with everyone present.

"I need to get permission to do my own job now?" Navdha

demanded.

"Hey, okay, calm down," Samar intervened. "Aarav, it was just

three writers, nothing formal, yeah? They're going to be promoted to
editors soon, God knows they need to improve fast. The more
Navdha works with them, the better. That'll be harder if she has to
keep everyone in the loop on every little thing."

"Let her work with them, of course, but this was—"

"This was nothing formal," Samar insisted, "and I hear you,

Navdha does not own the writers. I'm sure she knows that. She's
going to keep us in the loop going ahead. Right, Navdha?"

"Yeah, sure, I'll do things the proper way," Navdha said.

Aarav supposed he should be glad she acknowledged that even if

she might be unhappy about it. But Samar had struck too much of a
middle ground here. He wouldn't actually have bought her excuse
that it was not a big deal. Still, he decided to drop it. They had to give
in to Navdha sometimes to keep her happy.

"Fine," he said, changing the subject. "Navdha, I don't know if you

saw my message. I need a writer, any thoughts on who I should
take?"

"I haven't checked my phone in a while. Let me see," she said,

unlocking her device.

"Can this wait a couple of days?" she asked after she had caught
up on the group chat. "Everyone has had an event to cover recently, I
want to sit with each of them and go through their reports. Give
detailed feedback and stuff. I also had some exercises planned, to
help them improve their writing."

"Can it wait? No way! This is something important and we need to

get on this right away. I'm going to talk to the IT Directory now, and
hopefully, we can push a piece out by the day after."

"This batch of reports the writers are turning in, it'll be the last
pieces before we promote them, I need to work with them to iron out
any shortcomings."

"Goddamn it, Navdha," he snapped. She was really pushing him

today. "What's it going to matter how well they can write if they're not
writing about the things that matter?"

"What, so my job is less important? I've been up nights planning

all this. You get to walk in and declare it needs to take a back seat
just because you're the ME?" she fought back, her voice rising.

"Navdha, shut up! The writers are outside, they'll hear you,"
Samar said, stepping in between them.

"Samar, you told me—"

"Navdha!" he said, his voice carrying a tone of warning.

 She relented.

"Take whichever writer you want," she told Aarav. "What does it
matter who it is, you're going to end up writing most of the article
yourself anyway."
 28: A Matter Of Principle
Samar was worried. He wondered if the secret hierarchy re-org
he'd granted Navdha would go down as smoothly as he'd expected.

At best, Aarav would have been glad he could pursue his

reporting knowing Navdha would hold down the fort with respect to
the writing quality. If not that, he'd hoped they would find some
unspoken understanding and avoid explicit face-offs.

But the confrontation in their office had shown him one thing. To
Navdha, showing she had power was more important than actually
wielding power. She could quietly consolidate command over the
entirety of their writing department without anyone ever raising a
single eyebrow if she would just be content doing it quietly. But he
was now sure that the scene he'd just walked out from would not be
the last such instance. He blamed Rahul. He had given her too much
special treatment when she'd been an editor. Now it was in her head
that she would lose importance, and she pulled shit like this to
convince herself and anyone who'd listen that the top two were trying
to side-line her.

He wished she'd take a leaf out of Aarav's book. He'd noticed

what Aarav had done earlier—make it look like he was running his
story idea by the Board without actually doing it in a meaningful way.
He always made it seem like he was building consensus by leaving
the floor open for everyone to be involved, so it was democratic in
appearance. But he pulled a lot of strings from behind the scenes. He
had a knack for getting people to do things without ordering anyone
around. Most of The Standard heard and obeyed. This had been the
case even before it had been clear that he would take over as
Managing Editor.

But Navdha would not be content with this. She felt she had the
right to command and would see it below her to request instead, even
if it did achieve the same result.
 He'd have to talk to her and work out how their deal would be
implemented. But he had a different deal to make now, so he filed
that away for later.

He leaned against the outer wall of the Student Council office next
to the door. Eeshan emerged out the door a couple of minutes later.

"You're probably busy, so I'll cut to the chase," Samar said. "You
know MightyCabs?"

"They're that cab-sharing service some MTU students started,

right?"

Manipal was an hour and a half away from the nearest airport. At
the end and beginning of every semester, the college Facebook
group was flooded with posts as people tried to find someone to
share the ride and split the fare with.

A couple of their batchmates had recently signed up taxi drivers

for a cab-sharing service and created a website where students could
book rides. The convenience of letting MightyCabs handle the
headache of finding carpool-mates and the slight cost advantage that
came from their contract with the cabbies was a good draw for users.
The Standard had done a piece on their business, and Samar had
got to know the founders then.

"Yeah. Would you consider contracting all fest taxi bookings to

them? You must be driving in judges and performers, for Revels
especially. MightyCabs has drivers onboarded who can handle it.
They can't offer you crazy deals, but they will undercut whatever it's
costing you currently by a little."

The Council generally didn't mind throwing some lifelines to

student ventures if it wasn't inconvenient.

"I know a few of these people, they'll be easier to work with than
whoever you're dealing with now because they're students. And this
takes the headache of management off you," he added.
 "Yeah, sounds fine, shouldn't be a problem," the Treasurer said
immediately. "Listen, can you come in for a bit? We'll get you the
sponsors for your newsletter."

"Sure, I'll be right in, just need to make a quick call."

"Hey, Mayank," Samar said when the MightyCabs founder picked

up. "I talked to the Council, they'll give you all the fest bookings. I'll
send you a number you can follow up with."

"That's great! Appreciate it, Samar."

"Sure, happy to help. I do have a favour to ask in return, though."

"Go on," Mayank said.

"I'd like it if The Standard could provide some in-cab

entertainment. We'll hand you guys copies of our annual magazine
and fest newsletters. Could you get your drivers to place a few in their
cabs? On the seats or in the back-seat pockets or wherever," Samar
proposed.

"Hmm, I don't see why not, it won't hurt us. I suppose it'd get you
some visibility, yeah?"

"Exactly."

"Alright then, I have no issues with that. I'll be in touch. See ya,"
Mayank signed off.

Satisfied, Samar slipped his phone back into his jeans and walked
into the Student Council office. He found Eeshan on a phone call in
the corner. He held up a finger and pointed at the door to the inner
room to indicate Samar should wait inside.

He pushed the door open and found Darshan, Agni, and Riti in the
room.

"Samar," Agni said at once. "Your writer is a fucking slouch!"

 "What are you talking about?"

"That Chandra guy you gave me. He showed up thirty minutes

late, missing half the meet. I had to fill him in on the details. And he's
already three days late on the report. He keeps telling me it's almost
done, but it never gets finished."

"Oh, him," Samar said, remembering.

Agni had had a short semi-formal sit-down with some alumnus of

MTU—one successful enough to get a warm welcome back at
college but not high-profile enough to merit any media attention. For
some reason, Agni had wanted to milk it instead of getting it over as
quickly as possible. He'd told Samar that he had to send a writer to
him, who would create a report of the alumnus' visit to be published
by The Standard and go out as a press release to the local
newspaper.

This was an entirely un-newsworthy event that did not merit any
coverage, so The Standard would never have done it. Agni
demanding this had created a delicate situation, though. The
Standard tried to do what it could to accommodate SC members'
requests. They were good friends to have.

But Agni had not requested. Letting the SC think they could order
The Standard around was dangerous. The media body had no real
defence against the powerful Council. The SC couldn't infringe upon
The Standard's autonomy only so long as the SC believed they
couldn't do it.

Samar had found a middle ground by lending out Chandra, one of

their writers. Chandra would write the report that the Prometheus
Convenor wanted on a freelance basis. It'd be up to Agni to manage
him and see things through.

"I told you Chandra was going to be there as an independent and

not a Standard writer, that we'd bear no responsibility," Samar
reminded him.
 "He's still your writer," Agni spat out. "You know what, I think you
deliberately gave me your worst writer, that you knew Chandra was a
fuck-up and would do something like this."

"You knew the risk when you took him on," Samar said coldly.

"LISTEN HERE, WHEN I TELL YOU TO GIVE ME A WRITER,

YOU FUCKING GIVE ME A GOOD ONE! I AM THE GODDAMN
TECHNICAL SECRETARY AND THE CONVENOR OF
PROMETHEUS," he screamed, jumping up and sending his chair
flying backwards.

"And I am the Editor-in-Chief of The Standard. I take orders from

nobody. You can shout your head off, but that's not going to change a
thing," Samar said, keeping his voice level.

He had an important audience to play to right now. The Council

usually stood up for each other, but he had to come off as the calm
and rational one to help get them on his side. Not that it was tough to
appear calm and rational when standing next to Agni.

"Alright, alright," Darshan said, finally getting involved. "Agni, chill

out. This is not a Council issue. Take it outside if you really want to,
but maybe just let it go? You knew what you were getting into with
this arrangement."

Agni glared at Samar but pulled his chair back up and dropped
into his seat.

Samar took a chair far away from the Technical Secretary and
waited for Eeshan.

"Hey, Samar, sorry for the wait," the Treasurer apologised, walking
in. "So, you know we've talked to Rahul initially, but thought might as
well go over this with you too."

He slid a sheet of paper and one of The Standard's old

newsletters across the table.
 "Here are all the sponsor logos," he said. "It'll need to be in every
day's newsletter. How much space can you give it?"

Samar sifted through the mess on the table until he found a pen
and turned the newsletter over to the last page. A good quarter of the
page was taken up by contact details—the names and numbers of
the EIC and the Faculty Head, and The Standard's website. The rest
of the A5-sized sheet was split between a crossword and a quiz.

"This goes," he said, crossing out the Contact US section. "The

other stuff gets shrunk a little, and you get everything below this," he
finished, drawing a horizontal line an inch or two below the midway
mark.

Riti walked across the table and peered at it, then at the list of
sponsors.

"Looks a little cramped for space," she commented.

"Our design team will figure it out," Samar assured them. "We can
reduce the margins and adjust the placements and whatever. We're
not going to make them tiny icons and squeeze them in a corner if
that's what you're worried about. It'll be clearly visible."

"Okay, good. I just WhatsApp-ed you a contact of the Social

Media team, get in touch with them for the original files of the logos,"
Eeshan said.

"Social Media is also drawing up some promotional content for the

sponsors and the fest in general," Agni said. "Put those up on your
liveblog too."

"Sorry, what? We've only agreed to the sponsors' logos in the

newsletter daily and twice a day on the liveblog. We haven't talked
about any sort of other content," Samar replied.

"Well, we're talking about it now."

 "Let me discuss it with my team," Samar said.

That was always a good excuse to not commit, but Agni wasn't
buying it.

"Discuss it with whoever the fuck you want, but those promos will
be on your liveblog," he said.

"Look, our agreement—"

"Here's our new agreement—do what I tell you to do or get the

fuck out. This is my fest, and in my fest, you take orders from me,
Samar."

So that's what this is about, Samar thought. Agni just wanted to

get back for Chandra. But it had to be an empty threat. There was no
way he could kick The Standard out of Prometheus. Especially not
when they were running PAV too.

Samar turned to Darshan.

"You seriously cannot be—"

"No, don't look at him, my word is enough," Agni snarled.

There was a mild look of embarrassment on the President's face,

but Samar could see he wasn't going to interfere. It was Agni's fest,
and Darshan couldn't openly overrule him.

"Okay," Samar said, turning back to the Convenor. "What is your

word then? You dictate what goes on our site, or else we don't cover
Prometheus?"

"I know you're the official media body or whatever the fuck, so you
cover whatever you want, I can't stop you. But as long as the liveblog
is on our app, what I say goes on it goes on it. If you don't like that,
you're welcome to take it back to your website, and good luck with it."

Samar swallowed.
 So far, Agni had just been an annoyance, but this was a real
threat. He couldn't see a way around it. Getting the SC to put their
liveblog on the Prometheus mobile app had been good, of course, but
then they could also walk it back like Agni was saying he would.

He got up stiffly.

"Alright," he said. "I will consider your ask."

"You do that," Agni smiled.

Samar walked out of the room, taking care not to shut the door too
softly.

He had barely descended the steps outside the office when he got
a text from Riti.

"Wait," it read.

Riti appeared half a minute later.

"Agni thinks I'm going to the washroom," she said. "Darshan

texted me from across the room and told me to talk to you. We
couldn't say anything in there, Agni—"

"I understand the situation," Samar interrupted.

"Yes, of course. Anyway, about that whole liveblog thing—"

"Look, we try to find ways to help out. But we're not one of the fest
categories, we don't report to the SC," Samar reminded her.

"I know. Most of us know, okay? Agni isn't talking on behalf of the
entire Council."

"Well, what are you going to do about it?"

 Samar realised he was being too curt. Riti was only trying to help,
she was on his side here. She was one of the classic honourable
Council types who cared about doing the right thing. But he'd just had
to walk out of a room without managing to get the last word in and
was still recovering from that.

"See, Agni is a hothead, but his fires run out eventually. Closer to
the fest, he won't be so sore about your writer, and one of us can talk
him out of this. He won't care enough to fight it too hard. So, you're
actually fine there."

"But by the time this can happen, he would have got our liveblog
removed from the app if I don't bend over to him now, is that it?"

Riti nodded.

"There's a meeting with the AppDev team ten days from now,
where they'll review all the pending work. If you haven't agreed to his
demand by then...," she said.

"He'll order the team to skip the integration," Samar finished

grimly.

"Correct. I don't suppose you'd consider giving in for appearance's

sake for now? In the end, the rest of us will make sure you won't have
to post anything other than the logos."

"No chance," Samar said. "That's still giving in to his threats and
setting a bad precedence. And suppose it doesn't work out, that you
don't convince him to drop it, then what? We'd either have to break
our word or compromise our liveblog."

The liveblog itself was secondary here, this was a matter of

principle. And Samar could not give Agni the satisfaction of breaking
him.

"I was afraid you'd say that," Riti sighed. "So fine, here's
something else. The AppDev meeting I mentioned is mostly going to
revolve around app features yet to be implemented."
 It took Samar a minute to take the hint.

"So if our liveblog was already implemented in the app, it wouldn't

be on the agenda?"

"Nope. And if Agni does remember and asks them to take the
liveblog out, then I'm sure the AppDev team would say that undoing
all that work would take more effort. That they need to focus on
completing the rest of the development. At which point, Darshan can
shoot Agni down."

Samar smiled.

"Darshan told you all this in a text message?"

"No, but I am sure he would have if he'd thought of it," she replied
with a slight smirk.

"Riti, I think I'm going to enjoy being in the Council with you."
 29: Throwing Things Around
Aarav sat in the corner, flipping through his news app and
listening to Navdha talking to the writers.

He played the scene through in his head. At first, it had just

seemed like Samar was trying to keep the peace for the sake of it,
but…

Samar, you told me, Navdha had said before Samar had stopped
her. There had been an unspoken warning there.

He worked backwards, trying to figure it out. Samar had only tried

to get Navdha to accept that she couldn't operate autonomously all
the time. Aarav now realised that all the time was key here, and
Samar might have been establishing that she could do it some of the
time.

But why? Samar knew the danger of indulging Navdha. They'd all
seen what Rahul's pampering had done.

Samar, you told me.

Told her what? That the writers belonged to her? The whole scene
seemed to hint at that, but why would he agree to it?

A Donald Trump story popped up on his phone, and Aarav swiped

past it. He'd had enough of that man.

The Art of the Deal, he thought suddenly.

Samar must have wanted something from Navdha. But what?

Aarav slid off the bench and walked out silently. The lawn of the
quadrangle glistened from a recent rain.

"Good, you're still here."

 Aarav turned to find Samar walking up the corridor.

"What?" he asked, not in a friendly manner.

He was still processing the possible Samar-Navdha deal and did

not trust his EIC right now. But those thoughts were quickly drowned
out when Samar recounted his conversation with Agni and Riti.

"What do you think? Can it be done?" Samar asked.

Raju, the Tech Head, was the one responsible for working with the
Prometheus AppDev team. He knew his stuff and could get things
done when he put his mind to it, but he lacked focus. It took a lot of
badgering from Aarav and looming deadlines before Raju would get
his shit together and deliver. But now, their deadline had suddenly got
a lot closer, and Aarav wasn't sure if Raju would move fast enough.

"I haven't got any updates from Raju in a while, but I'll handle it,"
he said with a confidence he did not feel.

He didn't want Samar involved with their Tech department right

now. They reported solely to him, as much as they reported to
anyone at all, and he didn't want to change that while he suspected
the EIC had back-alley business with other Board members.

"Cool, you do that. I'm going to go get something to eat," Samar

said.

Aarav waited till he was well out of earshot before placing the call.
He had to ring him thrice before Raju would get on the line.

"Raju, where are we with the liveblog integration?" he asked.

"Ah, still getting there, man," Raju said.

"You're going to have to give me more than that," Aarav said

impatiently.
 "Well, here is what we need to do. We need something on our
website that pushes out any new liveblog updates to a server. And we
need to create API endpoints that the Prometheus app can hit to get
the updates from this server. I'll have to add some custom code to our
site to enable this, it will take some time."

Aarav rubbed his temples. He was a Computer Science engineer

too but had no real-world development experience, and struggled to
keep up with Raju.

"We have ten days to finish this and get it built into the app,"
Aarav told him.

"Ten days? That's tough. They would need a couple of days after
the API is ready, so that leaves us a week for my end of the work,"
Raju said doubtfully.

The writers Navdha had been coaching filed out of the office, their
workshop at an end. Aarav waited for them to walk past him before
replying.

"Raju, this is serious. If we don't get this done, there's a good

chance we won't have our liveblog on the app."

"I hear you, but I'm kind of busy with something else for a few
days. Can you get me a couple more weeks?"

"You're not hearing me. I can't give you any more time because
it's not in my hands, do you understand?"

"Aarav, I'll do what I can, okay?" Raju said.

It sounded like it could have been a promise, but Aarav knew Raju
better than that. He had no idea what Raju was busy with and would
probably never find out. He had the habit of dropping off the radar for
weeks at a time. The evasive undertone in his words hinted to Aarav
that another such disappearing act might be imminent.
 He hung up without replying. It was no use. The Standard's entire
existence could have been at stake and Raju wouldn't give a fuck if
he wasn't in the mood for it.

He stalked back to the office in a cold rage. He barely noticed

Navdha near the computer packing up her backpack. His notebook
was lying on the bench near the door, and he picked it up, flipping it
open to the pending items, hoping he'd noted something down that
could help.

He'd written a single word next to the Prometheus app. Raju.

He should never have relied so heavily on the Tech Head. When

push came to shove, he could rely on nobody but himself.

On the opposite page, he had listed out all the members of The
Standard for quick reference. He couldn't bear to look at that right
now. In a sudden burst of violent disgust, Aarav flung his notebook
across the room.

"What the fuck!" Navdha jumped at the sound of the hard cover of
the book crashing through the wall.

Aarav ignored her and the hole in the drywall where the book had
made impact, pacing the length of the room.

"Aarav, what—"

"Ignore me," he said curtly.

"You scared me. What the hell is going on?" she said.

He had no inclination to explain himself to her. She could be of no

help. He wrenched the office door open to find Samar on the other
side, one hand clutching a samosa wrapped in a square of
newspaper and the other outstretched towards where the door handle
had been a moment ago.
 "Hello, what's going on here?" he asked with mild curiosity,
stepping past him to survey the hole in the far wall and the
expression on Navdha's face.

"Problem with the liveblog integration?" Samar guessed.

Aarav nodded unwillingly.

Samar walked across the room, picked up the book Aarav had
thrown at the wall, and handed it back.

"You're going to find a way," he said.

"I don't know about that. Raju—"

"Not Raju. You. You know that we don't get enough views for all
the effort we put into the liveblog, you know that this is the biggest
break The Standard is getting when it comes to the fests and we can't
afford to lose it. So I know that you will find a way," he said firmly.

The show of faith was misguided. There was only so far sheer
willpower could go. But he reminded himself that he didn't need
Samar getting involved.

He nodded to avoid further discussion on the matter.

 30: Discretion And Expensive Points
Samar watched Aarav click through their site's WordPress
dashboard on the office computer, hoping to find something to help.

Samar didn't have much hope for that. Aarav's tech skills were
limited. It was solely a question of whether he could get their Tech
team mobilised or not. It was a dim prospect, but he'd had to show
faith in Aarav. His sudden display of emotion had put him on guard.
Aarav could unravel and break down, like he had during the previous
fest. Samar had noticed that the newsletter quality had been
noticeably lower with Aarav not delivering.

The Standard was on the verge of reaching its peak. Aarav, more
than anyone else, would beat himself up if he didn't see it get there.

"I'm half-inclined to just make them open our liveblog directly as a

web page within the app," Aarav said in frustration.

"No, don't say it," he said, probably thinking mistakenly that Samar
was going to say it wasn't the worst idea.

A WebView would be the simplest solution. But it would also be

the ugliest, and the AppDev team would never ruin their app by doing
it.

"Wasn't going to," Samar said. "I was just going to remark that
everything is already on our website and it's a pain that they can't
take it off of there."

"Yeah, well, that's tech for you. Some things are easier for people
than computers," Aarav said, going back to his futile clicking.

Samar turned away.

"Hey, now," Aarav said slowly. "Maybe we can just read the
updates off the website."
 "You mean scrape the liveblog page?"

"Yes. See here."

Aarav pulled up the previous fest's liveblog and switched to the

page source from the web browser menu. He browsed through the
HTML that the web browsers translated to display the page on the
screen.

"Everything we need is here, we know the structure of the page

and where exactly the actual content is," he said.

"Okay, but how does that make things easier? We still need to
write code to read the page, extract the blog updates, and make it
available to the app via an endpoint," Samar asked.

"True, it isn't necessarily less work than writing a plugin to listen

for and send out updates from within our website itself. But the thing
is, nobody else in college uses WordPress to build their websites, so
Raju is the only one who can do that, and the only one who can fix
anything that goes wrong."

"So you're saying, if we choose to scrape our website instead of

doing it the right way, we won't need Raju."

"I know some people who could do it, yes, but they're not in The
Standard. I don't know what their price will be."

Samar considered it.

"We know the price of not doing it, anything we have to give them
will be worth it," he said.

"I'll bring them on, then."

Samar's stomach gave a small rumble. That samosa had not done
much for his hunger. He patted his back pocket to make sure his
wallet was there.
 "Be right back," he said.

It was a short walk to the line of shops that hugged one end of AB
1. Samar fished out a ten-rupee note and got another samosa before
walking back slowly. He found a once-familiar figure engaged in
conversation with his Managing Editor when he reached the office.

Nikhil turned around on hearing Samar walk in.

His hair looked like it hadn't met a comb in a while, and the pinch
of tiredness in his face and the dark circles under his eyes hinted that
Samar's little play was keeping him busy.

"Hey, Samar. My team is finalising media partners for the Youth

Conference," he said, clearly changing the topic.

"What does a media partnership give us?" he asked, playing

along.

"Access to all events, interviews with panellists, your logo on our

posters," Nikhil listed out.

It was the standard package, nothing that Nikhil had to personally

come here to discuss. Samar remembered that he'd tried to get Aarav
involved with the National Conference. The two had been tight before
Nikhil's fallout with the old Board and exit from The Standard. Samar
made an educated guess at what Nikhil had been talking to Aarav
about before he entered. Nikhil could use a lieutenant he could trust
right now, someone who could take charge of a part of the
Conference, and he was trying to recruit Aarav again.

"Okay, what do we need to do in return?" Samar continued.

"Publish reports covering every session," Nikhil replied.

"We get free entry, yes?"

 "Sorry, no can do," Nikhil said, shaking his head. "You'll have to
pay and get registered at the full price."

"I'm sure we can pay, but can we get registered?" Samar said,
unable to help himself.

Nikhil's eyes narrowed.

"How do you know about that?"

"Oh, I hear things here and there," he said vaguely.

He probably shouldn't have said anything at all. Not a lot of people

outside the Conference would know about their problems, and
drawing attention to himself was a bad idea.

"We'll sort that out, don't you worry. Go beg your Faculty Head for
the five hundred bucks for entry," Nikhil said, and Samar let him have
that parting shot.

"What was that about?" Aarav asked once he was gone.

"Ah, they're having some issues with their website, apparently. I

don't know the details," Samar said.
 31: Positions Of Responsibility
"Hold on, let me take this call," Aarav excused himself.

He closed the office door behind him and answered his phone.

"Listen, Aarav," Rahul said. "The EB interview with the Student

Activities department is getting moved to next week. That's fine with
you, right?"

"Sure. But why?"

"Well, it'd help your PAV work if you and Samar are officially
confirmed."

"I see, that makes sense."

"That's one reason anyway," Rahul said slowly. "This was Samar's
idea. That needs to be kept quiet, but I figured you're his ME, and the
top two shouldn't have too many secrets from each other."

"Go on," Aarav said, intrigued.

"Samar believes Nikhil won't be a problem after this rescheduling,

something about serious problems with the Youth Conference."

"Ah, yes. Fine, whatever. Let him play his games," Aarav said,
hanging up and going back in to the office.

"Now, where were we?"

"I was saying, it's doable. Your liveblog page structure is

straightforward, it wouldn't be tough to parse out the individual
updates posted. We can repeat the scraping once every few minutes,
and we'll get cheap hosting options to store the updates on a server.
The API endpoint that the app will use to read these should be easy
enough, we've done similar things before," Naman said.
 Naman and Kshitij were second-year developers who'd gone to
the same school as Aarav. Kshitij was a little wild and had the
arrogance that came with being talented in a crowd of mediocrity.
Naman was a more tempered, relaxed individual whose influence
made Kshitij more controllable and trustworthy.

"But we'll handle all that. Let's talk about what's in it for us," Kshitij
said.

"Honestly, there's nothing I can offer you. People work for their
clubs because, well, it's their club."

"But this is not our club," Kshitij pointed out.

"We can change that. Our recruitment drive is coming up, just put
in an application and I'll bring you in formally with the rest of the new
recruits."

The Standard's tech department had always been siloed away

from the rest of the organisation. Nobody outside it except Aarav had
any idea of what was going on or even who was in the team, and
Raju didn't really care what Aarav did. Aarav could maybe even
pretend Kshitij and Naman had been in the organisation since they
were first-years, and nobody would be the wiser.

"Bring us in to do what? No offence, but you guys don't do any

real dev work, it's just website maintenance. And that too a no-code
site. This scraping work is a one-time thing and doesn't add much
weight to a CV anyway," Kshitij argued.

"You're still sitting here despite that, so there must be something

you want. What is it?"

Naman leaned forward.

"Did you know that Manipal Matters is building a mobile app?"

"What? No, this is the first I'm hearing of it," Aarav said.
 "They're trying to keep it quiet, but word spreads in the developer
community here. And they're asking if Kshitij and I are interested."

"Well, are you?"

Kshitij shrugged.

"Building an app for a media body is a good project. But Manipal

Matters has a lot of developers already, senior ones. So there isn't
much scope to take the lead there," Naman said.

"And building an app for a media body is alright, but leading the
development of the college's official media body's app is better,"
Kshitij added.

Aarav thought it through. The idea of an app had come up multiple

times in the past, but they'd never had the team to execute it nor the
leadership with the will to push for it.

"Everyone consumes content on their phones, a mobile-first home

for our articles would be great. But will people care about our articles
enough to install it?" he asked.

"Definitely not. They'll read an article if it gets served to them and

catches their interest, but they won't make the effort to get an app just
for it. Manipal Matters knows that too, and they're planning on adding
other features to pull them in. An extensive directory of Manipal
businesses, for one," Naman said.

"We need to do something that still fits in with the official tag,"
Aarav mused.

"The college results portal is really shitty, especially when you are
logging in via your phone," Kshitij said. "We should integrate this
portal in our app with a better UI. There have been apps that connect
to the official site and fetch the attendance and grades from there.
But it's always been an individual effort, so they they all die out after
the developer leaves college with nobody to hand it over to. With The
Standard, the next tech team will take it up and keep it going."

They'd need college approval and funding for this, but the
administration would hesitate if they were showing grades, as they'd
be handling sensitive student data.

"We need to add something that the Council and the

administration will find useful," Aarav said. "It'll be easier to get them
on our side if there's something in it for them. Can we add a channel
for official communications? Right now, all circulars and notices trickle
through from emails to WhatsApp groups via the Class
Representatives. It's a slow and inefficient system, some information
falls through the cracks and doesn't reach all students. We should
offer something better in the app."

The developers considered it for a minute.

"Should be fine, yeah, we can manage that," Naman said.

"Also, we used to do this thing where we made a list of all

upcoming club events and published a weekly calendar. We gave it
up because it was too much effort. Our designers had to manually
add everything to the template each week. Anything we can do in the
app for this?" Aarav continued.

"Listen, Aarav," Kshitij said, getting annoyed. "We know our shit,
okay? We're going to build a kick-ass app, and I'm sure we'll be able
to implement every requirement. But before we go into a full list of
features, let's sort out our positions first."

"Right, yes," Aarav said. "Your positions."

"Something like Head of App Development would be nice," Kshitij

proposed.

Aarav shook his head.

 "You're second-years, you can't be Board members. You'll be
developers, and report to the Head of Tech and me."

"We'll be the only app developers in The Standard, we'd

effectively be leading the effort on this. It's only fair that our
designation reflects that," Kshitij insisted.

Aarav had come across people who cared too much about their
designations. It wasn't entirely a bad attitude, to be fair. They didn't
lose sight of the fact that they needed to get placed at the end of the
day, and a good position of responsibility added some heft to a
resume. Still, he was generally sceptical of such people. The actual
work could quickly become an afterthought with that mindset.

But he knew these two by reputation and from school. Sure, they
were keen on maximising what they got out of this, but they did take
pride in the work too.

"Okay, here's the deal. You start off as just developers, but I'll
ensure you get onto the next Board as Heads of App Development.
And I'll get a letter signed and sealed by our Faculty Head certifying
your work in bringing out this app," Aarav offered them

The selection of the next Board was technically out of his hands
and purview. But Aarav held considerable influence over his juniors
and most of them didn't have much of an interest when it came to the
tech department, so he was sure he could nudge them to ensure this
happened when the time came.

Naman and Kshitij looked at each other.

"Done," Naman said.

"Hey, by the way," Aarav asked when they were at the door. "The
Volunteer Corps' Youth Conference, have you heard anything about
some technical glitch with their website?"

"The Youth Conference? No, not really. I haven't heard anything

about them at all. I don't think they have an actual dev team, so
nobody to hear from," Naman said.

Something was off here. Maybe Aarav was just seeing

conspiracies because the Navdha thing had put him on guard. But
maybe not.

I hear things, Samar had said.

Naman and Kshitij were wired into the tech community, and they
hadn't heard anything. Plus, they were locals. MTU and all associated
colleges had an extensive network of Manipal residents who had
gone to school in the town. Volunteer Corps had a large number of
locals, but these two hadn't heard anything there either. And Nikhil
hadn't expected Samar to know about it.

Where was Samar getting his information?

Aarav wondered if he should just look away again. Samar had

always done things his own way, and he had done it well. Moreover, it
had always been in the organisation's best interests, as far as Aarav
knew.

No. This time Samar had crossed him. He'd promised Navdha too
much, Aarav was almost certain. She was too valuable to be
mishandled, he couldn't turn a blind eye.

He called Varsha.

"Hey, listen, I'm with a...friend. Can this wait?"

"Sorry, no," he said, surprising himself with a sudden harsh tone.

"I mean, this'll just take a minute," he said, trying to be nicer.

"Okay, make it quick," Varsha said.

"I need you to ask around to see if anyone knows about some
website issue with the Youth Conference," he told her.
 "Uh, that's kind of random. What's happening?"

"Long story, I'll tell you some other time. Just ask around and tell
me if you hear anything."

"Can you give me a little bit of background?"

"I thought you wanted me to make it quick," he said.

"Fine, then. But I'm kinda in the middle of something, so give me

some time, okay?"

"I don't care, Varsha. This is important, and I need you on this
right away. It's just talking to people, isn't exactly hard work for you, is
it?"

"I'm choosing to ignore your fucking attitude right now, I don't have
the energy for you. I'll get on it, but you watch yourself," the PR Head
said.

Aarav grimaced as he put his phone away. He hadn't meant to talk

like that.

He caught himself trying to suppress what had just happened, and

an old piece of advice floated through his mind.

Don't try to stifle out thoughts. Acknowledge them, address them,

understand what you're feeling, and then let it go.

He knew why he'd acted that way. That slight hesitation before the
word friend when Varsha was telling him she was busy held meaning.
He could guess what she was in the middle of.

This shouldn't hurt, he told himself.

At least his ears weren't ringing like the last time, when he'd
accidentally caught her popping a contraceptive pill.

They'd been in the middle of lunch when she'd downed it.

 "You alright? What was that for?" he'd asked, the day he learnt
never to ask a girl that.

"You don't want to know that," she'd chided him.

"Oh. Sorry," he'd said.

And then she'd told him anyway, for some reason, and it had hit
him hard.

He had nothing going on with Varsha. They hung out but it was
just that. He could tell that to the rational part of himself, but
chemicals were chemicals. Of course she saw people. It was college,
everyone wasn't a wallflower like him, they actually tried to get what
they wanted instead of living in their head. What had he really
expected from her, anyway? He'd hoped, in moments when longing
overpowered everything else. But he had tried his best to not expect.

You see, it's your expectations that hurt you. You can't control how
situations turn out, what other people do, so you need to set realistic
expectations. It's risky to confuse what you want to happen with what
you can realistically expect.

Risky. In this, at least I'm living on the wild side, he laughed to

himself.
 32: The Voice Of The Council
Riti called Nihal as she walked to the Council office.

"I have an update about your road widening thing," she said. "I've
talked to the Director. He says it's unfortunate, but there's nothing he
can do to stop the trees from going down. However, here's the good
news. You remember that seventy-five-year-old tree you mentioned?
He felt that that, in particular, was a tragedy and talked to some
Forest Department people. They're going to transplant it. They think it
can be done, just move it onto the campus property. Banyan trees
usually survive, so, yeah, small victory."

"Really? Nothing he can do? This is a cop-out, saving one measly

tree. The transplantation is still going to wreak havoc on the birds
anyway. You should have pressed him more, Riti, pressured him to
try to stop the entire project. That's what I'd asked you to do."

Riti frowned.

She had waited around the Director's cabin for weeks every time
she had a few minutes to spare. When she finally got to meet him,
she had walked out of the meeting thinking this was more than she
had hoped for.

"Watch the tone, Nihal," she warned. "I told you I'd do my best,
and I did, okay? A little gratitude wouldn't be out of place."

"Thanks for trying," Nihal said. "But really, don't you see this is
almost nothing? An empty gesture so everyone feels a little better,
without actually having done much."

"Oh, you're doing pretty well at remedying that by trying to make

everyone feel worse," she snapped, hanging up.

She stifled a scream. Of course it was just a symbolic gesture, but

what more did he expect? Sometimes just gestures weren't worthless
and could mean something.

Agni and Eeshan were gathering up their things when Riti entered
the office.

"Done for the day?" Riti asked.

"Yeah, but stay for a few minutes?" Darshan said. "Dhruv is

stopping by, there's some Sponsorship-related paperwork you need
to take care of."

Riti stretched out onto the sofa and waited. Dhruv appeared a few
minutes after the Treasurer and the Convener had left.

"I thought you guys had handled everything already," Riti said.

"We have," Dhruv confirmed. "It's not about Sponsorship. We

need to talk about Agni, he's become a problem."

"What, that whole thing with Samar?" Riti sighed.

"No, no," Darshan said. "Forget that, it doesn't matter. The

Standard is easy to deal with, they just want independence, for the
most part. Give them that, and nothing else is too much of a
problem."

"So, your idea of cutting the budgets of most categories and

reallocating the money to ones that'd get higher participation? Well,
Agni went about that with perhaps just a little too much gusto. The
Category Heads couldn't help but notice that he seemed to take quite
some pleasure in telling them that they'll be taking budget cuts,"
Dhruv said.

"Are you serious?" Riti asked.

"I've heard this from multiple people," Darshan confirmed.

"He also refused to listen to their grievances or offer anything in

the way of explanations or empathy," Dhruv added.
 Riti shifted in her seat uneasily. She'd known Agni would enjoy
doing this and had used that to get him to agree, but she didn't think
he'd have been so open about the pleasure it was giving him. Or
maybe she had just avoided thinking about what the aftermath would
be.

"But wait, I thought these were all people Agni had courted and
won over to get votes in the SC election," she thought out loud.

She had once asked Darshan how Agni had become the
Technical Secretary. He hadn't been a Junior Council member the
previous year nor had he been an active member of any clubs, so he
should have been at a disadvantage in terms of connections. True,
there had been no clear successor to that role since the Junior
Technical Secretary had opted out of another year in the Council, but
there had been likelier candidates in the ring.

Agni won through sheer aggression, Darshan had explained. He

had mobilised all his friends to get him meetings with everyone of any
influence. These were club leaders, for the most part. Agni had
promised them anything he had to, irrespective of whether he could
deliver it or not. Commitments like help getting newer clubs officially
recognised by the college, more liberal hostel perm exemptions for
drama and dance clubs who needed it for practice before big events
or competitions, bringing clubs into the fest by granting them new
events had all been made. Before Agni, college politics had had more
integrity in it than real-world politics because there were no direct
personal benefits that came with the posts. The other candidates
hadn't adjusted to Agni changing the game and were crushed when
the votes came in.

"Yeah, a lot of them had been promised the moon by Agni, so you
can imagine that this only makes them more furious," Darshan
replied.

Riti absorbed this.

 "That's cruel, even for him," she said, a little shell-shocked.

Someday, she thought, there had to be a reckoning. If Agni kept

on this path, saying whatever he needed to without believing in
anything, there would have to be consequences. Unless he actually
became a politician, of course.

"Anyway, the problem is, he still speaks with the voice of the
Council, whether we like what he's saying or not," Darshan said.

"So all the Categories are mad at us. What's new?"

"All the Categories, and by extension, most clubs as well," Dhruv

pointed out.

"And yes, someone or the other is usually mad at the SC, but
generally, that's when they think we're too incompetent to get them
what they want. This time, we're genuinely fucking them over, the way
they see it. Once they've completely lost trust and they all believe the
Council can't be relied upon to keep its word, everything falls apart.
No fest, nothing. Nobody will work with us. Do you see that, Riti?"
Darshan asked.

"But what do we do about it?"

"Us, nothing. This Council's reign ends with Prometheus. We're

too late and in too deep to dissociate from Agni now. And we can't do
that without killing the fest anyway," Darshan said.

Although he said it as a matter of fact, there was a little sadness

underneath. This was his Council and he hated to see it weakened.

"So, it's going to have to be you, Riti," Dhruv finished.

"Me? I'm a part of the Council too."

"A part of the Junior Council," Darshan corrected. "That's an

important distinction. Everyone knows it's the Senior Council
members who call the shots. You can distance yourself from us and
present yourself as a new face. Let the bad blood end with Agni so
the next Council can still have a working relationship with everyone."

"I'm not the only junior, though," Riti pointed out.

Darshan waved a hand dismissively.

"You're the only one we know for sure will be there next year. I
don't know who's still going to meet the minimum CGPA requirement
or even who's still interested at this point."

"Fine, what do I do?"

 33: Scare Tactics
Navdha took a seat far away from Aarav.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Let me get to the point. Navdha, do you have some kind of a deal
with Samar?"

Navdha raised an eyebrow.

"A deal?"

"Yes," Aarav said. "Maybe something that gives you a step up

over the rest of the Board? Like all writers and editors reporting only
to you?"

Navdha seemed genuinely offended.

"What is this, huh? You got so offended by what happened the

other day that now you've called me here to throw some half-ass
accusation around? Get a grip, Aarav."

She got up and kicked her chair aside, moving to the door.

"Navdha, sit down. We're not done."

"Fuck off, Aarav. This is insulting. If this how I'm going to be

treated, if I have to sit here defending myself against whatever
bullshit conspiracy theories you come with up, maybe I need to re-
evaluate if this is really the place for me."

It was a good performance, and maybe half a year ago, Aarav

would have erred on the side of caution and chosen not to press it.
But he knew her better now. She was a good liar and had a talent for
striking just the right emotional chords.
 He was off his feet quickly and planted himself between her and
the exit.

"I don't care what Samar gave you, Navdha. I just need to know
what he wanted from you."

"He didn't promise anything, are you not hearing me? Maybe
you're just finding it difficult to digest that he values me enough to not
mind me taking charge from time to time. That's not a deal, that's
basic respect for my talent."

"Okay, enough with that drama. I'm not buying it, and if you're not
going to tell me, fine."

Aarav stepped aside and opened the door for her.

"Go," he said. "But Samar is into some shady shit, I know that
much. If he's actually done what it looks like he's done with the Youth
Conference, it's not club politics here. He's broken actual laws, we're
looking at criminal activity. He's facing suspension, at the least."

"The Youth Conference? Criminal activity? Aarav, I don't know

what the fuck you're talking about. Come on, do you honestly think I'd
get involved in anything illegal?"

"No, but Samar wouldn't have given you the full story, you'd never
have known what you were actually getting into. That's why I'm
asking you now. If shit goes down, I don't think you'd want your name
in the mix. But I can't help you if you don't help me."

He had got to Navdha. She had paled a little and wasn't making a
move for the door.

"Aarav, I don't know anything about any Conference," she said

quietly.

"What did Samar want from you?" he asked again.

 "He just...he just wanted me to convince Rahul to suggest to the
Council that The Standard could take over PAV, after the
Photography Club people had quit," she said, her voice getting lower
with each word.

"What?"

"Yeah, that was it, I swear!"

Aarav frowned.

He couldn't see how this could connect with Nikhil or his event.
Just how many pieces did Samar have in play?

"Aarav, is there going to be trouble?" Navdha asked.

She looked pretty shaken.

"Trouble, yes. But not for you, if that's all the extent of your
involvement," he assured her.

"It is, I'm telling you the whole truth," she said. "And about what I
asked in return—"

"Forget it for now," Aarav said. "We'll talk about it some other
time."

She nodded.

Aarav gathered his backpack and walked out of the building. He

reread Varsha's text. She had asked around, but nobody knew
anything about the Youth Conference site.

If Varsha's network had no clue and Kshitij and Naman hadn't

heard anything either, it seemed unlikely that Samar could have. But
he did know, somehow. And, conveniently, it had come at the perfect
moment to foul any possible Executive Board play by Nikhil.

It was too much of a coincidence.

 He reached his lab in AB 1 and took his seat. There was a buzz of
activity a few places down. He tuned in for long enough to figure out
what was happening. Some poor schmuck had left their email logged
in on the computer, and Aarav's classmates were arguing about the
best way to have fun with it.

He jumped out of his seat, fumbling for his phone.

"Pick up, pick up, pick," he prayed.

Miraculously, Raju picked up.

"Aarav, I'll get on the liveblog, okay? It's just that—"

"Fuck that. I need you to do something for me immediately. It'll

only take you a few minutes, so no excuses, okay?"
 34: Reasons To Hate
"I am not really authorised to talk to you," Riti lied, "so I hope I can
count on your discretion?"

The three Category Heads nodded.

Riti thought they might appreciate her efforts more if they thought
she was taking a risk for them. She threw a cautious look behind her
for effect. The door to the classroom remained shut. There was still a
while to go to the Association of Computer and Information Security's
actual meeting.

"I know that you guys must be dissatisfied with the budget cut,"
Riti began.

The ACIS club ran Prometheus' hackathon.

"Dissatisfied is putting it lightly," Chinmay growled. "Agni told us

he'd turn the hackathon into the fest's centrepiece, and instead, we
get this?"

"And do you know what that bastard did when we asked him
about it? He fucking laughed," Tejasvi said. "Laughed and told us it's
his fest, and if we want his money, we should maybe get him more
participants."

Riti held up her hands.

"Look, I know. The thing is, we lost a big sponsor. We didn't have
the money, we had to make cuts everywhere, it wasn't just you."

"Wasn't our fault you lost the sponsor, though," Chinmay said.

"No, of course. I'm just saying that there was a reason. But still, I
agree you guys weren't treated with the respect you deserve. Your
event is important to the fest, and right now, it probably doesn't feel
like that. That's why I'm here. I want to help make it right," Riti said.

"You're a Council member," Gaurav pointed out. "If you want to

help, just help."

"I'm a junior. This is Agni's fest. I'd only get shouted at if I said
something openly," Riti said.

Agni had always taken every opportunity to tell people it was his
fest, so this argument wasn't a hard sell. They might even sympathise
with her position.

"Why are you here, then, if you can't help?"

"I want to let you know that there are still people in the Council
who understand your position. And I can't go against Agni, but there
are other ways to compensate you to an extent. To start with, I can
get your food tokens doubled and extend your fest perm exemptions
by a few days."

Everyone involved in the fest got a daily token that could be used
in the cafeteria. The tokens were valued at the exact price of an Oreo
Shake, a crowd favourite.

"Yeah, whatever. But we just want to run a successful event, and

we don't have enough money for that," Gaurav replied.

"I'm getting there. This was just to show you guys some
appreciation. Coming to the money, I've been talking to Eeshan, and I
did convince him to offer a concession. The money situation has
eased a little, and he thinks he can gradually release around five per
cent of your original budget back."

The deal with the delivery platforms had put them slightly in the
black, and Eeshan figured he could undo a part of the cut without
throwing things out of balance again. It had to be a small increase to
escape Agni's notice.
 Tejasvi gave a grim smile.

"We're still down fifteen per cent, you can't expect us to be happy
about this."

"Look, I know, it's a bad situation. But I'm doing what I can to
make it a little better. And also, believe me when I say this whole
mess is a one-off. We just need to get through this one fest any way
we can. We'll be in a better position next time, and things will be okay
then. Just work with me?" Riti pleaded.

They exchanged looks. Chinmay gave them a brief nod.

"Fair enough," Tejasvi said. "We appreciate the effort. We'll talk
again during the next fest."

Riti trudged out of campus. She'd spent the last few days covertly
dropping in on all the major Category Heads, having minor variations
of the conversation she'd just had with ACIS. They'd been the last on
her list, and she was glad it was over.

She found Darshan near the parking lot, smoking a cigarette

under the No Smoking sign that the Director had made the Council
install.

"It's done," she reported. "They seem convinced, I think we're

good for now."

"Good girl," Darshan said, fishing a pack of smokes out of his

jeans and offering it to her.

She pulled one out and borrowed his lighter.

Across the road, students poured out of the gate, breaking away
towards the parking lot, the rickshaw stand, or the restaurants.

Riti took a deep drag.

 "So, we fixed the budget, we found a new PAV, and now we've
averted a breakdown of campus order," she said thoughtfully.

"Working on your CV already?" Darshan asked.

"No, it's just…doesn't feel like a Mission Successful moment, you

know. Tomorrow there's going to be some new crisis, some new
reason for people to hate us."

"Aye," Darshan said. "Welcome to the Council."

 35: The Last Of Sympathies
Samar checked the time on his phone as he turned the corner and
closed in on their office. He was fifteen minutes late, which was right
on time for MTU, but he hadn't seen any other Board members
around.

Only Aarav stood outside the office, a solitary figure with his
skinny arms crossed across his chest and his back to the door.

"Where are the others?" Samar asked him.

"They're gone. I called them in early and we took a vote," Aarav

said.

Samar raised an eyebrow. Something was off here.

"A vote?"

"Navdha told me about your deal with her."

Goddamn her, he thought. Samar was sure she'd kept bigger

secrets than this. She'd also leaked bigger secrets when it suited her,
though, so there was that.

"We needed a photography department. I saw an opportunity, and

I did what I had to do to make sure we took it," he shrugged.

"Samar, enough," Aarav said with a tired sigh. "You created that
opportunity. You'd done a good job of getting Sagarika to shut up, but
when Rahul asked her about it directly, she had no qualms ratting you
out."

"He asked Sagarika? Jesus, Aarav, do you realise the risk here?
You said it yourself, I'd got her to shut up. We would have been fine.
You should have let it be," Samar said in horror.
 "There's no risk to the organisation. Sagarika knows it was all you,
and like I said, we took a vote. You're out."

"What the fuck do you mean I'm out? I'm the Editor-in-Chief!"

Aarav unslung his backpack and pulled out a sheet of paper.

"Not yet, no. Here's your Executive Board application. Two days to
deadline. I haven't filed it yet."

He tore it into quarters, crumpled it into a ball and tossed it at

Samar.

Samar made no move to catch it.

"You're barking mad right now, Aarav. I played a little dirty, sure,
but PAV did what they did of their own free will. Are you really ripping
your Board apart because of this?"

"No, not just because of it, actually. But the rest of the Board is a
little more soft-hearted, you know. That was all I needed to convince
them. I didn't have to tell them about the keylogger on Nikhil's lab
computer."

Samar was stunned.

"How?"

"It didn't take too long to figure it out once I was sure you must
have had a hand in what happened with the Youth Conference. You
aren't the first person to do this," Aarav said simply.

A couple of years back, the Board members of a Computer

Science club had planted a keylogger on a lab computer to get into
the accounts of a rival club's Board member. They'd used the access
to crash their fest event and deface their website. While they'd soon
been discovered and had come close to suspension, Samar had
figured there were lessons to be learnt from them as long as he didn't
repeat their mistakes. He'd just made new ones.
 His position was clear now. Aarav had used PAV against him but
would keep the Youth Conference hanging over his head so that he
went quietly. If this leaked, it'd be too big a problem for even Samar's
appetite.

"Well played," he said.

"I'm not playing, Samar. You took things too far, I'm just protecting
my organisation."

"Please. You knew what I was and were always okay with it. Know
what I think? I think you just realised you'd rather not share power at
all. You didn't like that we brought Manipal Matters in to help even
after you'd spoken against it. You didn't like that I talked to Navdha
without you. You were afraid you were losing power, so now you're
going to replace me with someone easier to bend to your will," Samar
said.

Aarav laughed.

"I don't care about power."

"Yes, you do. You care about power for the right reasons,
probably, but you still care. You know, it's a shame. If you'd just
trusted me a little more, I'd have handled Navdha. The organisation
would still be in your control. I know The Standard needs you. But it
needs me too."

"We'll manage," Aarav replied. "Varsha will be Editor-in-Chief, she

can do the socialising and build relationships."

"Varsha? She's a social butterfly, aye, but you need more than a
pair of pretty wings at the helm," Samar snorted.

"She has her limitations," Aarav admitted. "But I'm going to be at

the table too."
 "No offence, buddy, but there's a reason you let me have EIC. You
need an hour of preparation to fight the introversion and anxiety
before you can talk to anyone who isn't wearing a Standard
nametag."

"I'll still get the job done. I've done everything this organisation
needed me to do so far, and I'll keep doing it. You're finished, Samar,
end of story."

It really was, Samar realised. There was no undoing this. He

gazed out across the quadrangle. The security guard dozed in his
chair near the stage. The AB 1 cat stretched next to the fountain at
the opposite end.

"Hey, it's just a club, right?" Aarav said in a weak attempt at

humour for some reason.

The Standard refused to call itself a club. Clubs just organised

events. They were a media body, a superior organisation in their
eyes.

Samar guessed there was still some guilt in Aarav, that he didn't
like the taste of this affair. Let him choke on it, he thought. He had to
get a punch in.

He gave his rehearsed smile that exposed his incisors just so.

"I don't suppose there's any chance you chose Varsha just to keep
her close, did you? I mean, it's obvious you're into her, but I hear
she's got something going with someone else. You're never getting
with her, so maybe you're settling for this."

"Get the fuck out of here."

Whatever sympathy there'd been was well gone now.

"You know, Aarav, you think that if you do all the right things, leave
behind a great media body as your legacy, you'll be remembered and
respected. All those people you convinced to kick me out, they're not
going to care about the things you want to do with this organisation.
Nobody is going to love you for this. This time next year, they'll have
forgotten everything you've achieved. In a couple more years, they
won't even remember your name."

Samar walked away, having got the last word in one last time.

And so it ends, he thought.

The entire Board knew what he'd done with PAV now, one of them
would blab. It would leak eventually. But it was too late for the
Photography Club to get back in, so nothing would change on that
front. Samar had been deposed for his crimes, so The Standard
remained guiltless. Navdha's involvement with him would sully her
and give Aarav enough moral authority to ensure she didn't act out
too much. Nikhil was no longer a threat either.

Samar shook his head ruefully. Aarav had played this perfectly, he
had to give him that much.

But there was one loose end. Samar took out his phone.

"Why the fuck are you calling?" Shaleen demanded, predictably.

"Sorry, it was important. The Focusrite podcast equipment, I need

it back."

"Uh, no thanks. I'm not done with it."

"No, listen. Things went south, I got forced out of The Standard. It
could be trouble if they find it missing when I'm not around."

"That doesn't sound like my problem. We had a deal, how about

we stick to it?"

"We had a deal, but circumstances have changed."

"Not for me," Shaleen brushed him off.

 "If somebody finds it missing and reports it stolen, what then?
There'll be trouble," Samar argued.

The equipment would be needed when The Standard's

photography department kicked off—there'd be video involved too,
and a good sound system would go a long way. He wasn't sure how
he felt about it, but things would still go down as he'd originally
planned.

"Yeah, I'll figure something out," she said simply.

He was about to ask her if she'd just throw him under the bus and
say she'd had no idea it was college property when Samar gave it to
her, but he was afraid she'd say yes.

To be fair to her, Shaleen had never pretended to be his friend. It

was his own fault that he'd wanted to believe she was.

Samar hung up in disgust.

If the podcast equipment never went back to the organisation,

he'd effectively be a petty thief. It'd just be pilferage, not part of the
great Manipal game. He could take being a grand villain, but not a
petty thief. Not petty anything.

He got a glass of iced tea from the small kiosk behind AB 1. He

surveyed his surroundings, thinking about making the drink a little
stronger. He still had some whiskey in a small bottle somewhere in
his bag.

"Samar!"

Ah, crap.

"Hey there, kid," he said.

"Do you have a couple of minutes? I had to talk to you about

something," Kriti said, running up to him. The huge Standard tag
flapped around on its bright orange lanyard around the second-year
writer's neck.

"Sure," he told her.

"So, I know promotions are happening soon…"

"And you're worried about whether you're going to make editor or

not," he guessed.

Samar considered telling her he wasn't in the media body

anymore. But she'd find out soon anyway. He'd been her first mentor
when she'd joined a year back, and he didn't think she'd become
close to any other senior. Might as well do this one last thing.

"Well, the few reports you've turned in were fine, nobody had any
issues with those. But, I doubt you're going to be promoted
immediately. It's only because you haven't written enough, and it's
easily remedied. You just need to come out with one long piece that
isn't an event report. That will get you through," he said.

She looked thoughtful.

"Fair enough," she said. "It's not that I don't want to, I just can't
think of anything I wanted to write about."

"Can't help you there," Samar replied. "You know best what
interests you."

"Yeah, I guess," she said, disappointed.

He suddenly remembered an old draft he'd abandoned.

"Tell you what, though," he said. "I can give you an unfinished
article of mine, you can work with that if you like. It's about
immortality."

"Immortality?" Kriti said, wrinkling her nose.

 "A discussion on why we should be doing our best to get to
immortality. Not the science of it. What the fuck do we know about
science, anyway."

"We're only engineers, right?" she quipped.

"Right. I wanted to write this because I realised people still believe

eventual death is a good thing. They don't have the fucking
imagination to see that eighty or whatever years are not enough, if
any number is enough at all."

"Wouldn't we get bored eventually?"

"Fuck that. Do you realise how much of the world you haven't
seen yet, how many books you haven't read, how many things you
haven't done? I think we're going to find ways to keep busy. Humans
are creative. But sure, when you're like a thousand, if you're really
done with everything, take a pill and end it. Still better than the slow
rotting of age."

Kriti blinked.

"Are you sure you don't want to write this yourself? If you feel so
strongly about it."

"Nah, my writing days are done. I'll send you my draft, do with it
what you will."

Samar stood there for a while after she'd gone, hoping she'd see
that article through. The irony of his piece on immortality dying a slow
death unseen by anyone didn't sit right with him.

He could have done so much, he'd had the whole college at his
feet. He'd almost got there too. So fucking close. He'd done almost
everything right.

It stung a little, there was no denying that. But it wasn't a bad way
to go. At least he'd gain a little notoriety when people found out about
some of the things he'd done.
 He walked to his car and found Vartika leaning against the side.
She dropped her cigarette to the ground and put it out beneath her
heel.

Samar guessed that Aarav must have given her a heads-up. As

back-up in case he didn't go quietly? Or so he'd had a friend around if
he took it badly? Whatever.

"So," Vartika said. "How far did you get by screwing people over?"

"Not as far as I'd expected to," he admitted.

 Epilogue
tonight the night beckons me

to drive back down to the sea

and wonder

if there's someone I know

in that houseboat rocking off the coast

whether the waves

have washed away

all the myself that I buried here yesterday

and then beached them back

saltier but otherwise the same

so I can walk the coastline

to empty my shoe

on my therapist's couch

and still carry out the sand

left in my socks

Aarav looked at the DT sign, white letters on a red backboard,

debating whether to go in. A few Council people were getting drinks
tonight, and he knew he should try getting on friendlier terms with
them.
 He didn't feel like it though, didn't think he could put in the effort to
pretend he was one of them. He should be feeling better than this. He
had the strongest standing within The Standard anyone could have.
He'd made somewhat of a peace with the fact that work would have
to be a replacement, however poor, for actual human relationships,
so he should have been on a high right now.

But he just felt weird.

Nobody is going to love you for it, Samar had said.

Aarav knew that. The Standard had once promised to be the

home he couldn't find elsewhere, but the forces that alienated him
outside were in there too. Navdha would always be most people's
favourite, no matter what he did. Samar had been the only other one
who saw that, and the only one who understood him, in a way.

Aarav turned the key and powered on the music player.

"Piece of shit," he cursed when the CD whirred inside without

playing. He switched to his phone and picked the most recent playlist.
A Fall Out Boy song rang out from the weak speaker. It was the same
one he'd been listening to the last time he'd been here, when he'd sat
in a different car and talked to Varsha about a suicide in a parking lot.

I can get over people, that's not a problem, he'd once told his
therapist. It's just that I'm tired of having to do it over and over.

He turned the ignition and put the car in reverse. He couldn't be

here right now.

The huge billboard boasting MTU's famous alumni glowed under

white LEDs outside the campus gate as he drove around aimlessly.
Halfway to the Manipal Lake, he turned the car around as Patrick
Stump sang about his last blues. He didn't notice that he was driving
to the Student Support Centre until he suddenly found himself outside
it, staring at the converted 3BHK.
 He'd first come here for a therapy session after Revels the
previous semester. The Standard worked on their newsletters till
dawn, and it was the night they made their last newsletter of the fest.
The old Board had checked out by then. Traditionally, the editors did
the heavy lifting on this last night, partly as preparation for when
they'd be doing it on their own the next fest and partly because their
seniors were too exhausted to care anymore.

Samar had been working with the rest of the editors on all but two
pages. Aarav and Navdha were the leads on those last two, which
had the excerpts—fifty-word witticisms on half a dozen of the fest's
events. The briefness of the text hid the difficulty in getting them right.
And that night, they just hadn't got them right.

Misfortunes had aligned. One of Navdha's best friends with a

troubled history had tried to overdose on sleeping pills and was in the
ER. Navdha had tried to power through. In hindsight, Aarav could see
that it spoke volumes about how the intense work culture sometimes
bordered toxic. Rahul had eventually convinced her to leave, and it
had been up to Aarav after that.

The artists would be idle until the writing department finalised the
excerpts and passed those on to them. He still wasn't sure if the
pressure had got to him or if it had been something else. All he
remembered was that he'd never before felt that alone in a room full
of people. He was supposed to belong in that room, but he didn't.

It was after midnight, and they were one of the few people still
working in the building, so there were plenty of dark corners to have a
mental breakdown in.

Jai, the Head of Writing, had stumbled across him a while later.
Jai was as close to Aarav as anyone else, and they'd sat with him
until he was done crying. Aarav didn't go back to the excerpts. Rahul
must have stepped in finally and picked things up again.

But he also didn't quit The Standard like he'd been on the verge of
doing. Whatever other problems he had, he'd realised, he'd only feel
worse if he didn't have that work.

Jai had suggested the Student Support Centre to him. They'd

gone there too, they said, and just talking to somebody could do
wonders sometimes.

So, Aarav had tried a few sessions. He didn't know if that was
what had actually helped him or the darkest of his clouds had just
passed on their own.

He sat outside now, with the rain drowning out the music from his
flimsy phone speaker. Here was a different sort of legacy, he thought
amusedly. On The Standard's website, he published the best of
himself, carefully edited discourses. In a file inside this building was
the opposite, some of the worst of his thoughts, as raw a version of
him as there ever would be.

He backed up the car, turned it around, and sped away, leaving

that part of himself to rest there.

He walked into DT a few minutes later.

Samar had been right. Aarav would stop being relevant quickly.
Hell, even Aarav himself would stop caring a few years out of college
when real life kicked in. But he cared now. MTU would know his
name as long as he was here.

It was still early, but the place was already filling up. The Student
Council would be hanging around somewhere.

Aarav walked around until he found a space on the wall free of

graffiti. He pulled out the permanent marker he'd found in his bag and
drew The Standard's logo as best as he could. He followed it up with
his name, making sure it was a little larger than the logo itself.

He had his kingdom now. Long live the king.

The Keys To The Kingdom
The Office, by Vipul Mone
 About The Author
Anshumanth Rao
Anshumanth was born and raised in Manipal, a university town in
Karnataka. He graduated from Manipal Institute of Technology in
2020 with a B.Tech in Computer Science & Engineering. While in
college, Anshumanth worked for The MIT Post, the official media
body of MIT, as a Writer, a Sub-Editor, and the Managing Editor. He
had a brief stint as a reporting intern at the Deccan Herald newspaper
in Bangalore. He is a Software Engineer by profession.
 Contact
The MIT Post Author Page: themitpost.com/author/anshumanthr

Personal Blog: drearydreams.wordpress.com

Instagram Handle: instagram.com/mostpostmodernway

Goodreads Profile: goodreads.com/user/show/56015180-

anshumanth

E-mail: tnanshumanth.rao@gmail.com

Links: linktree.com/anshumanth